Google’s dominance and proxy web accelerator

I asked in the Platinax forums a few days ago about Google’s current dominance in search.

The response so far - it’s unavoidable, and possible even necessary.

Certainly that’s true to a point - Google have gotten where they are through sheer innovation and focus on delivering best relevancy - or certainly had until recently.

Regardless of current concerns, Google has already established and developed their market share, and are keen to exploit that, to entrench themselves deeper into search and the marketing that accompanies it.

Some moves aren’t so good - and now on the heels of the Autolink debacle, Google have released the Google Web Accelerator.

What it does is effectively create and store a proxy version of the internet, built up from surfing data generated by users of the web accelerator. And, of course, it also ensures that it stores as much user metrics data as possible, including copies of cookies.

While Google have long been seen to be developing themselves as the operating system for the internet, it’s more than a little concerning that Google are seen to be taking away the power of the internet away from the webmasters who develop it, and instead trying to maximise their own control of it.

It becomes the ultimate irony that a company that flaunted the catchphrase “don’t do evil” is now a fully commercial corporate entity, that now appears to be trying to claim the internet for its own use and control.

Certainly there’s a lot of unease about this new development, as Fantomas have pointed out - and have since developed an article showing webmasters how to block the new Google web accelerator.

At the moment there are two main questions we can ask:

1 - Where will Google utlimately be taking this?
2 - Is there anything we should be truly uneasy about?

At the moment, the second question seems to be the more prominent one.