Update: Google has changed it’s Agreement to eliminate some of what is mentioned here, and since Google Chrome was released last week there have been at least two security vulnerabilities exposed. So if you downloaded Google Chrome last week and want to keep using it, be sure and re-download or otherwise upgrade to get the patches.

Yesterday I tried downloading Google Chrome and couldn’t…. the “Download” button just launched a Windows installer. I already had it installed, I wanted to download the file. Huh. I copied the “terms of use” to a file to look at it closely later. Obviously Google has made available a windows binary for the initial release, and since I heard “open source“ open source” open source” during the webinar, I can assume the source code is available somewhere. I’d find it later.

I twittered a comment about that and Danny Sullivan replied about how Open Source is a happy term and all good and such. Clearly he is also cautious of Google… he knows he must be, although like me I’m sure he’s cautiously optimistic. We don’t hate Google nor do we want them to prove themselves evil.

I replied to Danny that the term “open source” means nothing more than that the code is available to be seen. A company can sell proprietary “open source” software, but license it so it cannot be modified or adapted or re-used or distributed etc. The controls on use and distribution are in the license, not the availability of source code.

This morning my buddy Stefan sent me the gizmodo link that shows Google’s license for the Windows binary known as “Chrome”:

you might want to take a closer peek at the end user license agreement you didn’t pay any attention to when downloading and installing it. Because according to what you agreed to, Google owns everything you publish and create while using Chrome.

The offending text from the Google license includes:

By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services…You confirm and warrant to Google that you have all the rights, power and authority necessary to grant the above license.

Wow (that’s what Stefan said, too). It seems Google is pulling a Bait ‘n Switch with Chrome.

“Chrome” is the licensed distribution that Google has put behind that “download now” button, and which everyone agreed to yesterday. “Chromium” is an open-sourced version, which Google has placed into code.google.com.

Of course everyone will end up with Google Chrome installed, not Google Chromium. If you follow the links, Chromium is for developers who can “get involved” and “contribute” and compile their own binaries.

Bait and Switch is the practice of offering something attractive to draw an audience of consumers, to which you then sell an alternative. Bait and Switch doesn’t have to be a covert, deceptive process, although it usually is because the bait and switch practice can cause considerable ill will when boldly done.

Google spoke so much about “open source” yesterday. Google promotes “Google Chrome” and “Chromium” which I believe are confusingly similar to consumers. Google will of course benefit from the marketplace confusion as people simply refer to it as “the Google browser”. Based on the download process, Virtually everyone will get Chrome, the one that hands over the rights to all content. Who amongst you can compile the source code?

I’m impressed and annoyed at the same time, a sensation I am learning to associate with companies like Enron and Verizon and Comcast and Google.

I think I understand why the Big Guns were in yesterday’s webinar… Larry and Sergey. This project is HUGE for Google. Wow.

Note: End-user License Agreements like this (EULA’s) haven’t faired well under court scrutiny thus far, but also haven’t been tested much. They certainly influence things.

Note: When Mozilla got greedy and switched retro-actively from non-profit to for-profit, their “open source” was re-compiled and distributed by the SeaMonkey project, leaving out many of the more burdensome “features” that had been added in by the for-profit Mozillers. Despite easy availability of SeaMonkey (Firefox), hardly anyone uses it. We can expect the same “success” for a similarly benevolent compiling of Chromium. If anyone suggests that “it’s open source! You can change whatever you don’t like!” it’s sort of like the used car salesman saying “the boss won’t let me write it on company letterhead, but I can personally guarantee this car is a good car for you“. Caveat emptor, even if it is “free”.

I know this will come as a shock to many of you, but I’ve accepted a position working for Google effective September 1, 2008. After 5 years of full time independence as a Competitive Webmaster and SEO Consultant, and after building out hundreds of web sites for my own publishing network and a collection of trusted clients, I’ll be signing on with The Google. It has been tremendously exciting, fun, and beneficial to have functioned independently during this past 5 years of amazing change in Internet Land. But I can’t fool myself any longer. Google is winning, Google will win, and if I want to win, my best opportunities are with Google. Plain and simple.

What does this mean for my clients? Well, you really need to read all the way through to the end of this post. What does this mean for my trusted SEO friends, with whom I have entrusted secrets and who have trusted me with secrets? Again, please read all the way through. What does this mean for the good people at Google? Perhaps that is the most interesting aspect of my going to work for Google.

Effective September 1, Google will gain access to virtually all of my business intelligence. I am pretty sure the meetings are already set up to discuss the details of my site networks, especially the ones I have operated in very competitive markets. Once I am on board at Google, Google employees will have the rights to access just about everything interesting about my businesses.

I have already been informed, via the legal terms and paperwork I had to execute just to investigate the opportunity, that Google will be inspecting my domains, my traffic logs, and everything else webbish about my web sites. But Google will also get a list of my collaborating partners, my advertisers, and my contracts with those advertisers. Google will inspect the rates I charge advertisers to place ads in my networks, and Google will take the names, addresses, and contact information for those advertisers (presumably so they can direct sell to them).

Google wants to know the rates I charge for CPM ads and the rates I charge for CPA deals. They want to know the terms, and they also want to inspect the activity logs of my ad serving system, down to the times of day I run ads, what I charge to run ads in different slots and at different times, and what my customers pay for their preferred placements. I have to say that while we explored this opportunity to work together, Google seemed excessively interested in the inner details of my business costs and profits. They even made an effort to quantify the amount of time I spend managing my ad serving systems, how often my clients change their ads, and how much flexibility I offer my advertisers.

Google also wants me to install Google Analytics on my sites, presumably to make it easier for them to know everything about my business as if all of the above wasn’t enough.

Since my agreement with Google permits me to continue operating my web sites provided I agree to some restrictions (no pornography, stuff like that I don’t object to anyway), they also asked me to allow them to insert their AdWords advertisers into the bidding system for my direct ad placements. They say their advertisers will compete fairly and they aren’t looking for preferred placement. I actually didn’t care too much about that, because honestly when you think about how they are going to know everything about my business anyway, what difference could it make for me? Like I said, Google’s kicking ass and I would be foolish to think they would do anything less than aggressively consume every last ounce of business intelligence they can get from me and my web businesses. How else did they get to be the winners? How else could they continue to dominate?

The terms of my joining Google are still privileged, so this is probably all I can state right now about it. I don’t have a Ph.D. (I dropped out after completing everything but the dissertation research), and even though I rock at answering Fermi questions, I wasn’t able to solve one of the puzzles Google uses to screen for brilliance. Not everyone will be happy to see me sign on. Until I post this, even Matt Cutts doesn’t know I will be joining Google. That should be fun.

Perhaps the biggest shock to everyone will be just how little Google had to offer me to get me to take this position. I’m basically doing it for peanuts. Oh sure I’ll make some coin but mostly I’m doing it for the… well… actually I don’t know if I can identify any truly good reason for joining Google like this. I live in Seattle so I don’t get the Mountain View Celebrity Chef or the free charter bus service with wifi. But I won’t have to manage my own ad serving network any more, which was a minor inconvenience. And if I adopt Google Analytics, well, I get the pretty reports without having to load up ClickTracks. Hmm… well, anyway. Best not to think too much, eh?

Now about that “what does this mean for my clients” and “what does this mean for my SEO friends” I promised for the end. No worries, folks. I’m not taking a job with Google. I’m simply signing on to their “free” Google Ad Manager service. All of the above simply describes just how much business intelligence and inside data access Google would get about my web businesses if I sign up for their new “free” Google Ad Manager service offering. Actually, I’m not signing on. I’d have to be stupid to sign on and give them all of that access. Completely insane. Sorry if you feel I wasted your time with this post.

Update: It looks like I inspired at least one Googler to quit his job working for Google.

I want to publicly thank Google for helping me show my corporate clients that they should not be running or trying to run automated rank checking tools.

Just about every client asks for a tool to automatically check position in Google. and most big companies insist on it. So that page at Google.com that clearly states “automated rank checking is illegal“,  is a great resource. It helps me help Google eliminate the automated queries.

Also that part about how running automated rank checking software carries negative consequences,like penalization or even banning in some cases, is awesomely helpful.

It’s really important that Google help us help them like this. The need for standardized reporting of the success of SEO efforts is very real. As an SEO and competitive webmaster consultant, I give my clients the best advice I can give, and I back it up with real world facts and reasonable explanations. I have been at this SEO Game for many, many years. I have experience.

I as one of the early webmasters punished by Google back in the late 1990’s  for running WebPosition, one of the first useful reporting tools. I think it was version 2. I used it from the corporate network, and the corporate network got banned from using Google.com. That’s right… all 1000+ employees got dead air when they tried to go to Google.com. It was a very good thing that not many corporate users knew about young Google at that time, or they would have been more upset than they were.

The email response I got from Google back then was brief, rude, and direct: you’re banned because you used “one of those automated tools”. He wouldn’t name the product, but he was happy to tell me there was little I could do to fix the problem unless I begged for forgiveness and promised not to ever do it again.

Lucky for me at that time I had a large enough IP block and I knew all about proxies. The boss was adamant about reporting on position. In fact, my career advancement depended on my being able to show a rather large group of busy scientists that we were achieving exposure for their work in search engines. If I didn’t show that, they would not collaborate.

Anyway, about that page at Google.com where I can send my corporate clients when they ask for a rank reporting tool… I seem to have misplaced the URL. Anyone have it handy?

I know about this one that meekly asserts you shouldn’t use checking tools:

Google’s Terms of Service do not allow the sending of automated queries of any sort to our system without express permission in advance from Google. Sending automated queries absorbs resources and includes using any software (such as WebPosition Gold™) to send automated queries to Google to determine how a website or webpage ranks in Google search results for various queries.

but the last time I sent a client to that page she sent me back a quote from the same guidelines:

Google prefers developing scalable and automated solutions to problems

Ha ha no, the irony was not lost on me. I didn’t enjoy that conversation so much.

Anyway, I seem to have misplaced the URL to the page that says “DON’T RUN AUTOMATED RANK CHECKERS OR WE’LL BAN YOUR ASS“, which is the tone I remember from that email I got from the Google engineer backin ‘99 or whatever.

We have to remember, when a client asks for reporting or rank positions, they are seeking accountability. The only answer they will accept is something that impacts the bottom line, which in this case, is Google rank. Without risk, why not go for the reward?