Happy Birthday Google! (Is Google happy?)

Today is Google‘s 8th birthday and i on behalf od the entire team of WATblog would like to wish the search giant a very happy birthday! Google  has not only transformed the internet but in some ways is responsible for the growth that internet as a medium sees today.

Since inception Google has always been in the news.. Sometimes for the products it has launched and many times due to the innumerable controversies surrounding it. Google has has been accused of several things right from copyright infringement to privacy violation and even child porn in the case of Okut google’s social networking site.

But recently two cases have hurt google more that they would have liked. Firstly is the Belgian Copyrights case against google news. Ok here is a brief of what happened. The news agency in Belgium complained that Google news which basically strips news pieces from other sources is against copyright laws.. The court favoured the news agencies and asked google to publish the verdict on their belgium homepage or face a fine of 500,000 euros ($640,900) daily if it did not publish the ruling. Now most people expected google to go against the court verdict but it did not and went ahead and published the court ruling on its homepage.

Google has appealed against the ruling and the case will be heard in November but the damage to google news has been done. More such incidents in other countries can popup as google become more powerful.

The other case is of Google adsense where a litigant accused Google of e-mail Tampering
Theresa Bradley filed suit against Google for fraud and misrepresentation says the search company also entered her Gmail account and removed all communications regarding the dispute. More on this can be read here

And the google’s problems doesnt end here recently a friend of mine faced lot of problem with Orkut where in a fake profile of her was created along with profanities and her phone number was given on the profile. Obviously someone who knew her number had done this. I helped my friend by emailing Orkut and the profile was removed in two days but the damage was done. Can you imagine the trauma this girl went through? I am obviously expecting that one of these days someone will file a suit against orkut as well.

The other issues that i think is brewing up in the closet is the adsense keywords issue. I recently recieved a mail from ebay.in (the email address said Commission Junction) about how i am not allowed to used keywords like Louis Vuitton and any similar words. The email can be read here.
Basically the issue i am pointing out is the issue of trademarks. Here is a good example Search the keyword "icici bank" on google or Click the following link : http://www.google.co.in/search?hl=en&q=icici+bank&meta= (right click and open in new window)

You will see that on the right column there are many advertisers along with ICICI but my question is If i am ICICI bank and i have a trademark and copyright over the words ICICI bank the isn’t it illegal that you can see my competitors when you search for ICICI bank? I mean this is equivalent to some competitor faking to be me in a direct promotion campaign on TV to acquire clients! It affects my business and i lose customers! This is another issue which i feel will be a big problem for google in th future and will directly affect its search adevrtising business.

All in all im a big fan of google but i feel the bigger it gets the more difficult it will be for Google to stay out of controversies and setbacks the kinds that will affect its bottomline.

But once again Happy Birthday Google! We wish you a long life