Google Earned the Hatred of Users

Earlier this week, eWEEK published this slide show about the enemies Google has made. They run the gamut from Microsoft in search, cloud collaboration and mobile, to Apple in mobile, thanks to Google's Android growth. Google has as well irked a number of smaller rivals in search. It's no secret that Google has ticked off a lot companies by being a ruthless competitor in its march to grab 65 percent U.S. search share and more overseas. Ironically, during Google says it has competed fiercely for the sake of improving Web services for consumers, Google has as well pulled enough ruthless stunts to anger competitors and consumers alike. This slide show illustrates how Google, as it grew wealthy and powerful, as well created a growing legion of people and competitors that hate it. This slide show was inspired by Smartphone Wars blog author Brian S. Hall, who may take the award for the biggest Google hater. See why in this blog post. It's a must-read. During there are, no doubt, more reasons consumers and businesses hate Google these days, we highlight some of the major ones here.

We don't mean great as in fantastic and shining, however as in large and in charge. The company will be the first to tell you that it has made a lot of enemies because it has grown so big. It is the Googlezilla many people fear, and along with that comes a whole lot of loathing. As a matter of fact, Google's growth isn't what has irked companies. It's how Google has done it that bothers folks. We're not simply talking about adding talent and research through acquisitions. More specific examples follow.

From search to Gmail and other services, Google's main access vector is the Web. The company amasses a ridiculous amount of user data in dozens of data centers worldwide, and leverages a lot of it for advertising, like as not its most reviled online business. That bothers a lot of people. The question five years ago was, what does Google know? This slide highlights the many sources Google has for collecting user information. In all fairness, users can remove their data from Google. But, many people are for all that concerned with the question of what will Google do with this information?

Google saw Facebook kicking serious butt and scoring serious user engagement. Google Buzz didn't steal any major market share. So what does Google do? Build Google+ to spite Facebook and steal some users for time spent on Google, which is highly resourceful at monetizing big user bases in search, YouTube and mobile. Google calls this competing; others will call it copying, even with the unparalleled Circles approach and other perks, just as Sparks and Hangouts.

Perhaps, the worst copy act is taking code from Sun Microsystems' patented Java software for Android. Now Google is feeling the wrath of Oracle, which probably bought Sun so it could sue Google for just this kind of blatant affront. All in all, it has to be proven in court, and during it doesn't look good for Google, there has been no decision but-beyond the court of public opinion. Pretty much anyone following the space that doesn't work for the company thinks Google ripped off the Java research.