Google is a profit making corporation. So is Harrah’s casino.

When finding out that the odds are stacked in favor of the casino —is anyone actually surprised or outraged? Do they stop going?

When Google tweaks their algorithm to benefit them and increase their profits, is anyone actually surprised or outraged? Do they stop using them?

Around 2002, I ran several retail websites that used email traffic, PPC advertising, SEO and other means to generate traffic. I interacted with hundreds of online companies that helped to optimize websites, generate leads, send out emails off proprietary lists and so on.

One of THE biggest gripes then (18 years ago) was that the search engines (in particular Google) kept changing the algorithms and knocking high ranking sites out of the first or second page results.

The result — retool everything, increase advertising costs, rewrite content based on changes, all to improve ranking, all resulting in increased revenue for Google.

And throughout, the stated purpose of all these changes was to make search results more relevant. Back then I believed this was 70% true, the other 30% making more money. Today I’d say at best it’s 50/50. They are corporate and huge and profit hungry.

It is likely the casino is going to tweak the slots so we win 50% of the time? No. Will it stop most being from dropping those quarters? No.

But we won’t stop looking for alternatives.