That's the ultimate check on Google: if we start to act too abusive or "evil" we know that people can desert us. So it's in our enlightened self-interest to try to act in our users' long-term interests.
I hear this line thrown about quite a bit. And while it's true with regular users, it's certainly not true for webmasters or advertisers. Google controls around 67% of all US search share. If an advertiser doesn't play by your rules, they forfeit a significant amount of natural search traffic.
All good for most of your policies but there are some real gray areas. I had a site years ago that got hit with a javascript hack on an obscure page. StopBadware found it within a day or two and suddenly we were blacklisted... virtually all organic traffic disappeared overnight. It took weeks to get the warning lifted and that was only as a result of a significant viral PR campaign (such as this).
Maybe this has been addressed, but there are other areas. Affiliate sites are also penalized quite heavily by Google. It's one thing to take a stand due to the supposed quality of many of these sites (which frankly has little correlation with the presence of affiliate links... most sites suck). It's quite another when Google has a large affiliate advertising practice in house and a significant investment in an affiliate link tracking/cloaking company.
I mention this with all due respect and I hope you take it as constructive criticism. I think the organic side of the house does a great job overall. The paid side is another story IMHO. Part of this is organizational stupidity... I struggle with this every day and I have a much smaller organization.
I hear this line thrown about quite a bit. And while it's true with regular users, it's certainly not true for webmasters or advertisers. Google controls around 67% of all US search share. If an advertiser doesn't play by your rules, they forfeit a significant amount of natural search traffic.
All good for most of your policies but there are some real gray areas. I had a site years ago that got hit with a javascript hack on an obscure page. StopBadware found it within a day or two and suddenly we were blacklisted... virtually all organic traffic disappeared overnight. It took weeks to get the warning lifted and that was only as a result of a significant viral PR campaign (such as this).
Maybe this has been addressed, but there are other areas. Affiliate sites are also penalized quite heavily by Google. It's one thing to take a stand due to the supposed quality of many of these sites (which frankly has little correlation with the presence of affiliate links... most sites suck). It's quite another when Google has a large affiliate advertising practice in house and a significant investment in an affiliate link tracking/cloaking company.
I mention this with all due respect and I hope you take it as constructive criticism. I think the organic side of the house does a great job overall. The paid side is another story IMHO. Part of this is organizational stupidity... I struggle with this every day and I have a much smaller organization.