Google Boutiques sees a new Google pay-to-play model to insert itself into verticals.

3 different Google money making models

With Google Books Google said it was going to scan any book it could get. Not for private use (permitted under fair use) but to republish huge chunks of them. And, oh, maybe to put a Buy This link next to them.

That model meant a lot of trouble with numerous lawsuits which saw Google use its “oops, we didn’t really mean tocrawlback policy.

Like.com made money by using affiliate links when sending people to an online shop. The online shop would make the big bucks and – sale assured – would pay Like.com a percentage: the common affiliate model.

Google pay-to-play

Google Boutiques on the other hand has online shops pay Google to have their products available. Google Boutiques then might send traffic over which may or may not convert.

That wouldn’t be so bad or so weird if Google wasn’t the world’s largest search engine – but now we’re talking about a company that controls 80% of Internet traffic, so to say, and they run a “shop” where they ask brands to pay for inclusion in what essentially is a pay-to-play search engine.

That’s not good or at the least worrisome to online retailers everywhere.

And what’s with the whole non-branding thing?

Google Boutiques branding

They’re mentioned on the about page but play it off as something a company they bought happens to do but, really, no, it has nothing to do with us as a search engine.

Move along now, nothing to see here...

Sure.

Google Monopoly & Unfair Online Trade

“With Universal Search, we have chosen a [model], as a vendor of information, that produces the best end-user outcome — sometimes that's a Google source, sometimes that's another source.”
-- Eric Schmidt

No, not that knowing Google we would suspect them of promoting their own services through search.

Google ad

Or that they would put their own services on top of search results and call attention to them.

Google ad

 

Or that they would use predictive search paths to lead people down a slippery slope the road.

Google ad

Quick, here’s an envelope: how much can you bid on your fashion item Adwords term to outbid Google for those top spots?

Not enough? Awwww, how sad… 🙁 Oh well, how about you pay Google to be included in their fashion verticals online storefront?

shocked

Yeah, pretty amazing, isn’t it?

About the Author: Ruud Hein

I love helping to make web sites make it. From the ground up if needed. CSS challenges, server-side scripting, user and device friendly JavaScript tricks search engines have no problems with. Tracking how the sites perform and then figuring out how to make that performance and the tracking better. I'm passionate about information. No matter how often I trim my feeds in my feed readers (yes, I use more than one), I always have a couple of hundred in there covering topics ranging from design to usability, from SEO to SEM, from life hacks to productivity blogs, from.... Well, you get the idea, I guess. Knowledge and information management is close to my heart. Has to be with the amount of information I track. My "trusted system" is usually in flux but always at hand and fully searchable. My paid passion job at Search Engine People sees me applying my passions and knowledge to a wide array of problems, ones I usually experience as challenges. It's good to have you here: pleased to meet you! Read more...