Freetards turn on Google
Well it has been a long time coming but the freetards are finally starting to wake up to the fact that Google is not really part of their club. Or, rather, that Google belongs to their club when it suits them but not always. Check out this story on Wired.com …
Context & Ripple Effects
This rupture has been building since mid-year: by May 2007 the 'Distrust/Disdain of Google' meme was already circulating among bloggers (Distrust/Disdain of Google moves in), alongside jibes that Google's own search house wasn't in order (Google Can't Google?). The trigger this week, per the Wired piece Fake Steve Jobs points to, is Google stripping PageRank entirely — down to zero — for bloggers in the PayPerPost paid-posting network.
The timing sharpens the irony. In the same week Google confirmed $3.9 billion in capital expenditures over eight quarters with more expected, shipped new cellphone software in a major wireless push, and was reported (unconfirmed, via WSJ) to be preparing a spectrum bid that could strain its cash flow — behavior that looks less like a freetard club member and more like an infrastructure owner consolidating power.
First-order effects
- Bloggers in the PayPerPost network lose the search traffic their paid posts depend on, as Google zeroes their PageRank scores outright.
- Free-software advocates who had counted Google as a fellow traveler publicly reclassify it as just another platform owner policing its index — a reputational break Wired amplifies.
Second-order effects
- Paid-blogging networks lose their core distribution lever, forcing them to sell on something other than borrowed Google authority.
- Bloggers broadly get the lesson that ranking is Google's to grant or revoke, pushing publishers to diversify traffic sources rather than optimize for one gatekeeper.
Third-order effects
- If Google keeps enforcing its index while betting billions on wireless infrastructure — capex already at $3.9 billion over eight quarters, with the spectrum bid still unconfirmed — the gap between its open-web image and owner-operator reality widens, converting the enthusiast coalition that burnished its brand into a standing critic bloc.
The trend: Google's evolution from open-web ally into infrastructure owner is turning the enthusiast community that built its brand into its most vocal critics.