They’ve done it again … Google have just thrown a spanner in the works by deciding,
without warning, something was ‘wrong’ with one of my websites – ironically the
thing that was wrong was exactly the same thing that made the website so
‘right’ for them back in April…

To be fair though, Google do not exactly have a reputation for consistency
among our online community so I really should have expected it … but this got
me thinking about companies like Google and how they want to be perceived
publicly as the ‘good guy’ and what you actually get when you work with them,
which is usually completely different…

Google have always placed themselves as being ‘outside’ (or even above) the
idea of making money online, yet they were the people behind Google Adwords, on
which many internet marketing fortunes are based … and now they have decided
to distance themselves from all of that even further, they appear to have
become everybody’s affiliate so I’ve noticed of late that the ‘Google Shopping’
results turn up conveniently high when searching for, say, a new TV…

Pretending not to be the evil empire is certainly not a new trick, after all
Apple built their entire business on the fact that they were ‘saving’ us all
from the evil Microsoft empire even when they themselves became far bigger …
and a lot of future technology will have to dance to their tune (or should that
be iTune?) in pretty much the same manner they previously credited to
Microsoft…

Of course we see this in all parts of our lives … take for instance banks
(certainly an emotive subject in most people’s book) … on one hand you have
the helpful and well intentioned people we see all the time at the local branch
who are tasked to look after our money … and on the other we have the those
several levels above them who took the decision to actively sell mortgages to
people they knew couldn’t keep up the payments after whatever ‘special rates’
had expired…

Add to that the huge pharmaceutical companies who seem to, whilst tirelessly
doing all that research for the ‘benefit of humanity’ have the uncanny knack of
only managing to discover a drug that will keep a disease at bay (so you have
to keep buying it) rather than finding one that actually cures that disease
altogether.

It seems that the newer big companies in the public eye are keen on playing
this game as well…

You see, over recent weeks I’ve also been dealing with another very large
internet empire, whom despite being quite new to all this, and seem to the
outside world to appear efficient and have their act very much together … in
reality have proved to be entirely rudderless and inconsistent … and when
challenged on their behaviour vaguely wave you in the direction of their
various policies … which in summary read: ‘because we said so’.

Quite frankly, we’re not going to change any of this … so I suggest you waste
no effort doing so … and instead, however reluctantly, accept that you might
be on the receiving end of this kind of high level faceless nonsense at some
point in the future.

What you must do, however, is exactly what those of an entrepreneurial bent have always
done … which is ‘think around’ the situation, planning accordingly and have
contingencies in place so that should you fall victim to the wholesale daftness
of others, it is no more than a mere ‘bump’ in the road…

Rant over. Now composing oneself, ‘bucking up’ and getting back on with it…

Until Next Time,

Tim Lowe

Publisher, Tim’s Business
Lowe Down