EPIC, also known as the Electronic Privacy Information Center has lodged a formal complaint with the FTC over the launch of BUZZ when they automatically enrolled 176 million users without their consent.

EPIC states BUZZ and Google is being “deceptive” and this violates consumer protection laws. “Twitter is a social networking site and people know what they are signing up for. With Gmail, users signed up for an e-mail service not a social networking service,” said Ms. Nguyen in an interview with the BBC

The complaint has asked the FTC to force Google to provide Gmail users with opt-in consent to the Google Buzz service  as well as provide notice and require consent from Gmail users before making changes to their privacy policy in the future.

I know it must seem like I am on an anti-Google tirade as of late but not only did Google automatically sign you up for BUZZ, they also created your circle of friends based on who you have emailed.

I am sorry Google, but don’t you think that should be my choice? Seems Google wanted to have an instant “Facebook” style platform to serve it’s ads and because you have a Gmail account, they signed you up for BUZZ without your permission.

Picture this, your automatic circle of friends just included all of your business contacts and your competitors because you have exchanged email with them in the past. Perhaps you are in talks with a new employer and your boss and the HR dept. of the new company are among your friends for all to see??

Are you being faithful in your relationship??

So what did Google have to say?

Google has apologized and said it has acted quickly to address concerns and introduced a new option to disable the service.

“If it becomes clear that people don’t think we’ve done enough, we’ll make more changes,” Todd Jackson, product manager for Google Buzz told BBC News.

He also stated that “tens of millions” of users were “rightfully upset” and that the firm was “very, very sorry”.

What I want to know is: If  Google agrees that I am “rightfully upset” why did they violate my privacy in the first place?

In an interview with BBC News, Mr Jackson admitted that testing of the service had been inadequate and that it was not opened up to a big enough group of people to try out.

“We’ve been testing Buzz internally at Google for a while. Of course, getting feedback from 20,000 Googlers isn’t quite the same as letting Gmail users play with Buzz in the wild.”

This example of blatant disregard of privacy totally debunks Google’s stance or the protection of, and right to privacy they expressed with China over the hacking of a few Gmail accounts said to be owned by human rights activists. There obviously is no need for any hacking, Google is more than willing to hand your list of contacts over to anyone and do what it sees fit with your personal information.

As an owner of a marketing company, if I sign you up for a Gmail account (which is required for an Adwords account) and your privacy rights are violated, I could be held liable!

“This case illustrates a lot about Google’s corporate culture where a company is run by computer scientists whose operating method is don’t ask for permission when you can always ask for forgiveness,” said John Simpson from EPIC. This statement could not be any closer to the truth.

If you have read my last article, you will see this exact mentality represented in the administration of Adwords accounts. It is becoming more and more obvious Google is taking it upon themselves to dictate who can be found in search results and what features your are being subscribed to. Top that off with the inability to cancel an Adwords account or remove your financial information from it… I think you can see why we our opinion of Google has soured.

Unfortunately dealing with them and doing what is required to get good organic rankings has become a necessary evil.

My company firmly believes in the sacred right to privacy of all our clients and we will not jeopardize that without your written consent when providing you with services offered by Google as they are clearly demonstrating time and time again violations of the rights you have to protect you private information.

It is not very often that I go on a rant about a company that I was so vigilant with my support in the past but there are a lot of disturbing things going on in the Google camp and I am suspending setting up any Adwords accounts for my clients as a result and directing their business to Yahoo and Bing.

As one of the consultants of this company I feel it is my responsibility to look after the best interests of my clients and I am not confident promoting the use of a Google Adwords campaign is in ANY business owners best interest.

A bit of history… My last blog post of 2009 I expressed the results of an indexing study we did where the results suggested Google was purposely burring the links of legit companies  deep in the search engine result pages of relevant searches. Basically, the study suggested that if you were a legit business with a lot of content on your website you were being buried so far in search results you had to pony up for an Adwords campaign if you had any hope of being seen buy the customers you need to keep the doors open.  (AKA the monetization of search results)

As a result of that article, Google canceled our company Adsense account 30 days later stating we were a threat to their advertisers. Seems Google does not like it when marketing companies are bad mouthing them… No big deal I thought… The pittance we made from the ads was not worth the real estate on our company website so we deleted their scripts and wiped our hands of Google ads with good riddance…

Then we started to see something else we have never seen Google do before…

Google has recently been “luring” unsuspecting customers to it’s Adwords advertising program offering $100 gift coupons. A free $100!! Who would not take this bait! Customers would present these little gems and ask us to set up Adwords accounts for them…

And some set up accounts for themselves… only to come to us in total horror asking us for help.

Well I am going to beg every reader, PLEASE DO NOT set up an Adwords account with them. It will be something you will come to regret.

First, they camouflage your payment options during the sign-up process so you end up having a post-pay account… Meaning, they will run your ads and then bill you once you have received the clicks..

Problem is, once the account is set up, there is no way to cancel the account. In all fairness of keeping this article as accurate as possible, we did find a way to cancel pre-pay accounts but not post pay. Google states there is a way to cancel a post pay account in the help forum but when you follow the instructions posted in the help file, the link to “cancel” your account does not exist. And neither does Google Customer service.

You can have a credit balance, never served a single ad with them, and you can not cancel your account. If you are not computer savvy enough to figure out Awords you will just keep racking up the charges for ads unknowingly while Google just keeps billing your card…. Day after day after day after day… And if you try to call them.. you cant. Google is a multi-billion dollar company and they do not have a single phone number you can call if you need help. Trying to find a link to submit an email is virtually impossible and they never get back to you.

And would you also believe there is no way to change your billing options from post pay to pre pay? When trying to research how to remove a bank card from a Google account we found the only way to remove a card is to submit a new one…

It is a little hard to believe a company like Google can not put the ability to change the way you want to  pay for your adds in your account.. and you can not cancel that account to set up a new one with the payment option the way YOU want to pay. Ethical behavior? Not even close.

So my company will no longer be recommending Google Adwords accounts to clients. In fact, we should have done this sooner as some studies are showing 18% of clicks on Google are fraudulent. Last year I wrote an article about the subject. You can read it by clicking here. There are also reports of Google being sued by advertisers because of these fraudulent clicks.

Consider this as well… How much does it cost you when your competitors click your ads only to deplete your monthly budget so their adds do not have to compete with yours??? Think it does not happen, think again.

I am finding it very hard to find anything I like about Google and their pay-per-click advertising business model anymore. I am also finding it hard to support a company that I feel is very unethical in the way they do business. For example, they sell their operating system for mobile devices to companies like Motorola and then shortly after completing the contract Google introduces a mobile device that is in direct competition to Motorola and other smart phone producers. As an industry response to this,  Apple fired a shot over the bow of Google and purchased a company to get into the paid advertising business… (I commend Steve Jobs for this decision and I really do wish Apple my best.)

Other reasons there is no love lost

As the company SEO specialist I also frequently use the Google webmaster tools setting up accounts for clients so they can track the performance of their websites in Google.

The dashboard and the functionality it provides is a complete joke. It just does not work. The information they give you is dreadfully inaccurate yet I read article after article telling me how “sophisticated” the Google algorithm is. If Google is so great at all things concerning the serving of information, why cant they even find all the links to a website??? Well because some of them are not relevant they say… Relevant to who???  They will even say they have not found them YET!

Interesting… I can do a search for rubber dog crap and get the following result:

Results 1 – 10 of about 2,520,000 for rubber dog crap. (0.36 seconds)

But Google can not tell me where all the links to my website are??? They can give me 2,520,000 results for rubber dog crap though…. 2 and a half million??? Really.. Think about that, two point five MILLION results for rubber dog crap… I think the only “Crap” is in Google search results.

What a joke. If they can not have any decent tools for webmasters or provide accurate information to website owners, how am I to believe Google is on the cutting edge of search technology when our results were very conclusive… Microsoft’s accuracy of indexing is 5 times better!

All the REALLY good SEO’s  know… the Google Algorithm is a complete joke and all the things you need to do to rank well in search results are no more than white-hat exploits of Google’s indexing inadequacies and serving A LOT of Google ads. A little bit of “horn or toad” and a pinch of “shittofbull” and a closed door deal or two and BINGO you are on page one.

Look at the search results… Why are some large companies dominating the first page? Look at their websites. If you are serving A LOT of Google ads you will be boosted to page one because the more clicks Google ads get the more Google makes. Even if that means cutting a few companies in on the deal and putting them on page one. Google wants maximum ad exposure and they do it at the expense of companies that deserve to be on page one because they have the best and most relevant content for the search query.

Well Matt, Eric, and all you other Google gong bangers, the gig is up. This search Ponzi scheme you have been running the last few years is not working and I am not buying into it or serving it to my customers.  Ebay served this flavor before and most of their power sellers walked as a result.

You are taking advantage of your customers, Google WAVE is worthless, your maps give wrong directions, Your browser CHROME is FULL of bugs and crashes constantly, your phone sucks, and I am really having a hard time figuring out what you are really good at??

Wait one thing comes to mind…

Serving a lot of Garbage at the expense of small business owners who are struggling in this economy for the sake of your company profits. As A result, and because I am an avid supporter of small businesses and their owners, I will no longer offer your company ANY support and hopefully my readers will do the same.