Firefox Creator No Longer Trusts Google

watashi writes "Blake Ross the man whose scratched itch became the Firefox browser explains on his blog why he has a problem with Google's policy of promoting their own products over competitors' in search results. His main gripe is that the tips (e.g. "Want to share pictures? Try Google Picasa") result in an inability for other products (perhaps even Parakey?) to compete for the top slot on Google."

Comments

Re:Why shouldn't they?

[tpv]

Why shouldn't Google put their own products first?

Because ultimately it may not be in their best interests.

Google relies on trust. I enter my search criteria, and Google returns the "best" results it can find.
If users start to think that Google is manipulating those results for their own gain, then they will stop trusting the results and start looking at other search engines.

Is this "hints" section a sign that Google has crossed the line? Maybe - that's for each person to decide - but there is a line there, and Google needs to walk it very carefully if they want to maintain that trust relationship.

Re:Might as well be paranoid of everything

[blakeross]

> I didn't see Yahoo, MSN, or Ask pushing Firefox the way Google did.

And you believe those engines (with the exception of MSN, perhaps :) wouldn't similarly support Firefox if *they* were the default? We made Google the default in Firefox long before Firefox was popular because we believed Google provided the best service to our users. Perhaps that's why I'm upset with the company now. It was only once Firefox started getting big and driving significant traffic to Google that a deal was cut.

> Talk about biting the hand that feeds you.

I criticize Google because I want to see them improve.