It was just a matter of time before Google started promoting their own products and services above search results. Adding the icon image makes it really stick out in a page almost completely devoid of imagery.

Blake Ross of Firefox fame delves into the details:

The tips are different—and bad for users—because the services they recommend are not the best in their class. If Google wants to make it faster and easier for users to manage events, create a blog or share photos, it could do what it does when you search GOOG: link to the best services. To prevent Google from being the gatekeeper, the company could identify the services algorithmically.

Before weighing in let me get my disclaimers out of the way. I own GOOG stock and use their search over 95% of the time. I also use Gmail regularly. We run Google Adsense on this blog and at some of our other web properties. Have two rarely updated Blogger blogs and sometimes use Google docs and spreadsheets but that’s about it for Google products/services for me. I try just about everything new Google comes out with and find most of their products to be whimsical, but not terribly useful. For me, the three products they have that I’d miss if they were gone are search, Gmail and Adsense/Adwords.

The fact that they are screwing around with the purity of their search results is disconcerting. Blogger has been a well known splog (spam blog) haven for too long, which makes me want to answer their ad text: “Want to share your life online with a blog?” with:

Then don’t use the splogger’s tool of choice.

Google’s own Matt Cutts did a specific search for Blogscope’s Phiilip Lennsen and remarks:

… if I type in “blogoscoped”, I’m looking for Philipp, not to create a blog. The poor targeting alone is enough reason to turn off these tips (if I had my way).

From the screenshot at the top of this post, you’ll see people searching for this blog are being met with the same Blogger icon and pitch. As a form of protest I could stop using Google search and try somebody else, but the fact remains even with these misplaced Google ads, I prefer Google over the other guys. At the end of the day, I’m still happier overall with Google search results than others.

That’s how it works with me and products and service. Might be cliche but when the pain of staying is greater than the pain of leaving, that’s when my feet shuffle. These ads above the search results are like mosquitoes. One or two here and it’s not a big deal, but if they start feasting on me, I’ll do something about it.

Google’s ‘Do No Evil’ corporate mantra remains a hopeless goal because it’s too subjective. From a competitor’s view on the evil scale, Don Dodge from Microsoft:

Is this evil? No, I don’t think so…just hypocritical. Google has every right to promote their own products and services. It is just good business to do so. But, maybe they should avoid the hypocrisy and stop criticizing competitors for doing the same thing.

Some may see these little ripples in the pond as inconsequential, but people who use the service don’t. It’s the little things adding up. We are there to search for something specific, Google, so don’t lose focus giving us the most relevant results. If the most relevant results are something from you, fine, but if they aren’t, just say no.

Google’s honeymoon phase is over. The pain threshold is increasing. Good news for competitors. Bad news for customers. Welcome to 2007 where the search game could have some curious twists and turns.

• Google makes it easier to add Adsense to Blogger
• CNET ranks top 10 Google services, what does your top 10 look like?
• gada.be spammed by blogspot splogs
• Google inches closer to RSS
• GMail Talk blog
• Google implements new Blogger features