Google's Power?

Top ways Google can (mis)influence you!

Yes I am a Googlophobe. Why? Partly it is because I believe it when Jack Welch says that “only the paranoid survive”. Google is too big, too powerful for my taste. I really can’t see such centralized power. Also it did not allow me to sit for its placement proceedings Not that I wanted to go there, but not even a chance? That hurts. But enough cribbing.

If you are like 70% of other people, including me, either you have a Google toolbar installed, or first page you fire up is Google. Now imagine if instead of giving you the most relevant results (which it could find) it gives you the results *it* wants. Just imagine if the last search query you typed was not influenced by the money of some deep pocket adwords advertiser. And what is to stop Google from doing it? They do not publish the algorithm used to determine the relevancy of results.

What tool do you use to decide the worth of a web page? Well I have the Google toolbar installed, and it tells me the pagerank. What if Google increases the PR of its advertiser and/or decreases PR of its competitors?