Onsite “Review Stations” AOK with Google

Several weeks ago, I attended a Google GetYourBusiness online seminar and I was surprised to hear the speaker strongly encouraging SMBS to install a computer at their places of business to use as a station where clients, immediately upon completing a transaction, could easily leave a review on their Google Place’s page.

Last week, Scott Falcone sent me a link to a copy of an email from the Google Dealer Jumpstart Team endorsing the idea of review stations. Thinking that maybe the sales side of the house might not be on the same page as the Places team, when the question came up in the forums, I raised the issue with the Places support folks. Their response was that as long as there was no direct incentive involved, it would be an acceptable practice.

Clearly if training, sales and support at Google all say it is OK, then it must be OK to have on site workstations for the purpose of generating reviews. And one can infer from all of this is that the review filter would not block the review based on location (IP) alone.

Implications

Yelp and Tripadvisor long ago put in place bans on reviews generated onsite from the place of business. In the case of Yelp, the reviews get filtered. TripAdvisor goes so far as to flag/punish the business with a Red notice questioning the integrity of the hotel. Avvo will allow the practice by prior approval and an explanation as to the need. Google’s policy is clearly contrary to the industry norms. Allowing and even encouraging the behavior of using a review station is questionable at best.

While there is nothing against practice in the Google Places review guidelines it is a practice that I have discouraged in my consulting and writings.

Firstly it seems coercive. If a customer is in your store, they can’t very easily say no and more importantly, they might not feel free to leave a fully honest or negative review. It is on the business owners turf and it creates an unequal power dynamic that seems contrary to the spirit of fair, honest and useful reviews.

Secondly, the practice of allowing these reviews make abuse by business owners even easier and more likely.

Apparently, Google doesn’t agree with me. For now, at least with Google, you can solicit reviews in your place of business without worry of losing them to the filter if they are otherwise ok.

Your business

Should you gather reviews from a work station on your premises? That depends on a number of factors specific to your business. Despite Google allowing the practice, I am not comfortable with it in many situations. Because of ethical concerns and the obvious, location centric footprint I have never suggested the idea to clients.

There may be reasons why it makes sense for your business. Here are some things to consider:

-Certainly all of the ethical issues are at play and if you do encourage the use of an internal workstation you need to take them into consideration.

-There will still be logistic issues with user accounts and the likely need for the business to provide many users with help.

-I have said it before and I will say it again, DO NOT put all of your review eggs in one basket. This should not be the only way you gather reviews and Google should not be the only site you ask for reviews on. They could easily change their mind on this policy and all of the reviews gathered this way could disappear in a puff of smoke.

Conclusion

I think it an error on the part of Google to encourage reviews be captured in this way. Regardless of whether it is an intentional act on their part or an oversight in their policy, I think it will further degrade the quality of reviews in Google Places and make spamming easier and more likely to occur.

Neither you nor I have the ability to change which way the winds blow. If at the end of the day it makes sense for your business to implement the practice, do so cautiously. Recognize that any benefit may be short lived and the reviews may go more quickly than they came. Most importantly of all, respect the customer and their needs in the transaction.

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Last week I reported out a discovered Google Places Help page (since taken down but visible here) that discussed using the Places Coupons as a Check-in Coupon for Google Plus. This afternoon the folks at VentureBeat received a confirmation from Google that check-in offers from Places will be coming to Google+ next week:

“While prepping for a test of a new check-in offer feature, we published a support center article a little early and have since removed the article. We apologize for any confusion this may have caused. Please stay tuned for roll out of this feature for merchants, which we’re targeting for next week.”

Hints of a Places based check-in offer surfaced as far back as May when it appeared that they would be heading to Lattitude. Obviously the roll out of Plus shortly after that changed Google’s plan.

Offers have a long and sorry history in Google Places. Originally introduced as Coupons in 2007, they were largely hidden from public view for most of their existence. Google Coupons saw some successes during 2007 and 2008 having partnered up with ValPak but by early 2009 Places coupons had completely tanked due to lack of visibility. They made a brief reappearance in the main search results along with the Google’s fixed price local ad product Tags in June, 2010. In November of last year, Google changed the name of the free Place based Coupons to Offers just before the failed acqusition talks with Groupon and the subsequent roll-out of Groupon like deals called, confusingly, Offers.

Will the oft maligned Places Coupons Offers finally get their day in the sun? A free, easy to use check-in offer might give the feature much needed exposure and a new life, motivating smbs to revisit the Places feature and perhaps also leading them to think seriously about a Google Plus business page.

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I am not sure when this changed Google seems have made the login screen to create new user accounts more obvious as to whether you are are creating an account with a gmail or a 3rd party email address. This is much improved interface design that will make it clear that you don’t need a gmail address to get a Google account.

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There is a story unfolding at Google that indicates a huge shift in their thinking about Places. Google, over the past 9 months has been making significant investments in creating support mechanisms for Google Places. Yes, you read that right. But just to be sure let me repeat myself: Google has been making significant investments in creating functioning support mechanisms for SMB problems with Places.

I never thought that I would be writing the words Good and Support and Google Places in the same sentence with a straight face but if current trends continue they are approaching that benchmark. Given that they literally had next to no support as recently as early summer, this demonstrates a significant resource shift and policy change.

Good support requires good processes, good people and good tools. And based on my observations over the past quarter Google has made significant progress in local on all of those fronts. Don’t get me wrong, there is still long way for them to go but there has been a tectonic shift on every front that indicates a 180 degree change in Google’s approach to the issues for SMBs interacting with Google in the free local space.

The History

Support, or rather the lack there of, the poor product quality and the inability to fix all too prevalent problems has been a common thread amongst critics, including myself, of Google Places for a number of years. I have penned a number of screeds on the topic and not one of them showed Google in a favorable light.

The problem has always been that Google would roll out upgrades to Places while never fixing bugs AND frequently providing no mechanism to fix the resultant bad outcomes. Even if these problems were the direct result of a Google decision there was no remedy. If it affected a very small percentage of businesses then you would have absolutely no hope of a solution at all. In fact often it wasn’t viewed as bug at all. In Google’s eyes, the sacrifice of accuracy for a few businesses to see the overall improvement of the index was a switch worth making. It was just the cost of being in the large data, local listing business.

A classic example was the problem of merged businesses. A merging between two distinct businesses into a single Places page was an artifact of the merge/purge routines built into the Maps algo. Two similar businesses, located nearby would become a single Frankenstein like record that showed part from one business dashboard and part from another.

There was no easy way for Google to separate the two. Certainly there was no easy way for the affected businesses to separate them. It required months of careful upstream cleansing of the local ecosystem for BOTH of the affected businesses. It affected a very small % of businesses but if you were the one affected it could be devastating to watch your traffic dry up as your phone stopped ringing.

At the end of the day, the affected business might make their way into the forums, beg, cry and whine. Perhaps their posting was flagged by a top contributor and if they were extremely lucky an engineer would ultimately look at the situation. But it could be months or more likely never. Unless of course you managed to get the case a fair bit of publicity and the shining light of publicity “encouraged” an engineer to take a look.

Clearly Google didn’t want to provide a fix or perhaps was unable to provide a fix at the individual listing level. It doesn’t matter, there was no fix.

But now I am beginning to see a new Google Places support structure emerging that (hold on to your seat…) actually seems to be working. And in a dramatic departure from past behaviors, it is one that acknowledges that the individual Place listing is worth fixing.

The forums:

Historically the forums were a place for problems to go die a slow agonizing death… where problems would be written about but never solved. I would estimate that for much of my experience over the past 5 years in the forums less than 1 post in 5 (maybe as low as 1 in 10) would even get a response and a solution was available on less than one in fifty. If you check today you will see a much higher rate of posts being answered and many, if not all, have solutions. On some days the response rate can approach 100%. What has changed?

Staffing in the Forums: For the first time in my memory, there has consistently been at least one Google staffer and often more in the forums. Vanessa, who came on board in late summer, has responded to both top contributors AND directly to posters with reliability and persistence. She has stepped in and solved the types of problems that top contributors were incapable of solving as they involved direct Google intervention in the cluster. She has been alert to bugs and has, in several situations, stepped in quickly to be sure that a potential disaster was averted. Equally important is that it appears that the folks in engineering actually listen to her and that information is making it back into the forums.

Additional Volunteer Faces: One or two volunteers can hardly be expected to cover the hundreds of specific issues in the Places forums. For much of my history in Maps, there were very few regular folks providing support to businesses in Places and even fewer that had access to Google as Top Contributor. But Vanessa (with Joel Headley’s support) seems to have been instrumental in elevating more people to top contributor status (for example Linda B and Nyagoslav as well as others) so that the load is much more spread out. These additional TCs not only are more able to respond to the many queries but are able to alert Google to a need for intervention AND a fix.

Additional Paid Staff: In addition to Vanessa’s obvious public role, there are a new Googlers appearing in the forums from their Troubleshooter group on a regular basis of late. If Vanessa is not available, they are now filling in both privately to assist top contributors and in the public forums. A Google Press person noted to me upon inquiry:  I’m … able to confirm that we’ve invested additional resources in the Google Places forum to ensure that specialists can help answer users’ questions as needed.

The result? In the forums most posts are being responded to and in situations where a TC is unable to solve a problem a Google staffer is stepping in and providing answers and more often than not a fix.

Other means of elevating problems:

Report a Problem: With the exception of map based problem reports, Report a Problem, which came out in late 2009, always seemed like a deep, dark well for the burial of Places issues. I, a careful watcher, actually thought that the input was in fact being fed into the algo for large scale solutions and was not going to a human at all. It was either that or the largest joke that Google had ever perpetrated to get folks with Places issues off their backs.

But sometime around mid year (or perhaps earlier) that started to change. Dupes, erroneous categories and some of the other oddities (but not merges) of a Place’s listing, when reported via this mechanism, were starting to disappear within a few weeks. And despite the terribly inappropriate automated email responses, it seemed that there was something, or more likely someone, at the end of the those reports. This feature, not available in all countries, was recently also rolled out in UK, Germany, Finland and Sweden as well.

Troubleshooters: The troubleshooters, released this fall, are a self guided system that drives users through a precise description of an issue and in the end, generates a report that is sent off to Google. When first released, I feared that they were one more “piss in the ocean” effort that would collect data for engineers to determine what big data problem to solve next and would not solve the issues of individual businesses.

It appears however that not only has Google put in place backend procedures & software that can cope with issues like merged listings, it has actually staffed it with people that can operate the software. Issues are not only responded to on an individual basis but reported back out in a meaningful way when solved. It appears that there are in fact US folks at the end of the Troubleshooter system and they understand what is involved in customer support. When asked about the program Google PR said that “we’re experimenting with additional ways to offer Google Places users assistance with their accounts“.

Here is a report from a business describing the timeline of an issue that showed up in the forums shortly after the release of the Troubleshooters. Previously this sort of anecdotal testimonial had been unheard of:

Wow! pleased to announce my horrid merging mess appears to be fixed! Also revealing a whole new serp layout too with the maps and thumbnails! see it here http://tinyurl.com/3nvelt6  This is record time, I have been trying to get my badly corrupted places fixed since Oct 2010!  For you SEO pros heres my timeline for the new “fix a problem” link:

Implications & Inferences:

First and foremost there seems to be a broad understanding on the part of everyone at Google from the top down that they can’t move forward without some sort of support structure in place.

Recall that Google has shifted high level executives to focus on Google local. This shift may have started under Eric Schmidt with Marissa Mayer’s assignment to Local last October.  But soon after Larry Page took the helm in April, Jeff Huber was elevated to the inner sanctum  with a specific local portfolio. At a lower executive level,  I think it significant that Carter Maslan left Google Places this summer and it seems that Lior Ron, of Hotpot fame, appears to have taken on an increased role in setting the goals for Places. We can’t know for sure but these changes preceded the many shifts in support levels. I have to believe that they were likely instrumental in providing the necessary budget and in paving the way for making support in Local a funded priority.

As I noted at the beginning of the article good support means more than just good people, it requires good tools. I know that many problems that were once the sole province of engineers can now be solved by staffers like the folks in the Troubleshooter trenches. It appears that internally the necessary software tools have been developed that allows those without CS degrees to delve into the bowels of a business cluster and straighten out much (but not all) of the mess that is sometimes created by the algo. On the public side, the April, 2011 rollout and recent interface improvements of Mapmaker have given some of that power to the greater mapping community as well.

Too Soon to Declare Victory:

One can’t, by any means, declare victory by or for Google on the service front. Google is just beginning the process of adequate support of the SMB in Places. There is plenty left to do and plenty of messes to still clean up. Here are some of the outstanding issues:

The way that Google has implemented Places on the technical side means that any changes in the algo continue to affect Places listings in often unpredictable ways with new bugs and quirks cropping up on a regular basis.

There is still an incredibly circuitous route for an SMB to get help when going from the Places Dashboard thru the help files back to the Place page report a problem and onto the Troubleshooter.

It still takes a number of weeks for the “report a problem” process to see any affect and despite some improvements the communications back to the SMB are often less than understandable.

It is necessary for an “index push” to fix the display of many problems on an SMB’s Places page, oft times delaying final resolution of a fix for a month or more.

Reviews are a huge source of problems and frustrations and as yet, perhaps because they exist in a separate index, the problems there continue. It is an SMB flashpoint and one where Google really needs to double down on both the technology and support.

It isn’t always clear which problems should be solved in the Troubleshooters and what is the best path for specific problem resolution. Some problems like bad photos are done on the Place page, others are best done via Report a Problem and still others are most quickly solved via the Troubleshooters or MapMaker. I have trouble keeping is straight and I do this every day. No SMB can be expected to decipher it.

The Future of Support in Places:

As I noted, good support requires good processes, good people and good tools. Google seems to be on track with good people (Vanessa truly gets support and from my few interaction with the Troubleshooting staff they do as well). The tools are at least being made available internally and externally even if they are not yet easy to use. MapMaker is particularly powerful but still opaque example.

The processes are still an issue and there appears to be a huge disconnect between what happens in the Places Dashboard, where these support efforts should be focused, and the disparate support mechanisms (forums, things on the Place page, the troubleshooters in the help file) that are now in place.

Conclusion:

Compared to last year at this time, when everyone was wishing for any Google Places support in their stockings, it seems that we can now move on to asking for improvements in these process and tools. Google seems to finally be putting in place mechanisms to solve the many problems that they themselves have created. Hopefully the support that we are seeing is more than just a test and is a foundation for not just solutions but quick ones.

Long haul, to compete on main street, Google needs great service. It ultimately will be one of the things that distinguishes them from the many players in the space. It is also a “feature” that they dare not to bring into their coming battle with Amazon, Facebook and Apple.

Hopefully what I have seen over the past several quarters will not only help SMBs market their businesses more successfully and with less pain but will give Google the necessary tools to effectively compete in the local space in the future.

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Google has finally  provided some public guidance, if not a a long awaited fix, to deal with the persistent Places error state “We currently do not support the location“.

The forum comment provides a step by step procedure for assessing and coping with (but not solving) the issue. The listing nuking message, in the system for sometime, seems to have been occurring more frequently over the past 3 or 4 months. The work around offered is the one developed by the frequent contributor to the German Places Forums, Spinatmensch. If you want to see more discussion and experiences with the work around be sure to read the many contributor comments made in response to the suggested work around.

Here is the helpful step by step process that Vanessa, the Google Places forum community manager offered up in response to yet another question about the issue:

I’ve had my places business page for over a year, and now it says the ‘location not supported’ when I click view page?

Topic of your question: “Location not supported” No address change since original place listing – what is the problem?

I’ve had my places business page for over a year, and now it says the ‘location not supported’ when I click view page? I haven’t made any adjustements to the page except to add photos periodically. I have even advertised with google the past couple of months, but didn’t this month. Does that have something to do with places ad not showing up?

If this continues, I will never advertise on google again for sure.

——————————————————–

vanessagene
Google Employee
12/14/11

If you’re seeing “We do not supper this location” on your listing:

1) Search for it on maps.google.com — “business name and city”. Sometimes the links from your Places dashboard aren’t synced properly, and you should always search on Maps first to make sure it is indeed removed — often it’s still live and there, you just need to look it up via maps.google.com.

2) If you don’t see it on Maps, go in to the Places dashboard and poke the listing by clicking submit (wait a little bit, in can take some minutes to appear). Then again, go to maps.google.com to see if you see it appear live.

3) If you’re still seeing the message on your listing, use the troubleshooter option, and our team will get back to you via e-mail:

http://support.google.com/places/bin/static.py?hl=en&ts=1386120&page=ts.cs
I have verified > Yes > “My listing no longer appears on Google Maps.”

Believe me, we know this can be frustrating for you guys, and we’re working to clean it up so you see less of this happening.

- Vanessa

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It was a year ago April that Google made the first public announcement regarding the number of claimed Places listing. The number came in at 4 million worldwide. Yesterday at the BIA/Kelsey ILM West conference, Jeff Aguero noted that Google Places now has 8 million claimed Place Pages (out of 50MM worldwide). It was just this past March that Marissa Mayer, speaking at SwSX, noted that there were 6 million claimed Places.

The ability to claim a business listing was first rolled out in March of 2005 with the launch of Dashboard precursor, the Google Local Business Center. These four data points allow for some interesting analysis of the “run rate” at which Google is creating a direct relationship with business locations worldwide.

Here is a chart showing the growth since inception (U.S. data is estimated).

Some thoughts about the graph:

Obviously we are depending on Google for the numbers. We don’t really know how many businesses there are worldwide (I am sure that Google’s estimate is very approximate) and we don’t really know how Google is counting the 8 million. Does it include inactive accounts for business that are no longer active? Does it count twice businesses that have been claimed twice?

While there may be some questions surrounding the specifics of the numbers, the direction and rates seem pretty clear. As Everett Dirkson is purported to have said: A million here, a million there, pretty soon it adds up to real money. That certainly seems to be the case here.

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While perusing the Google Places Offer Help files I found a page discussing Check-in Offers via Google+. It notes:

If your customers have to visit your locations in order to do business with you, you can request that they check-in on Google+ in order to redeem your offers. They can choose to share the check-in publicly or with some of their circles, which helps spread the word about your business on Google+. They can also choose to keep their check-in private and still redeem an offer.

If your customers do not have to visit your location, for example if you serve homes or businesses by delivery or by callouts, you can keep this option off (set to “No”) and customers will not be asked to check-in when they redeem offers. We use the Service Areas and Location Settings setting on your listing to determine if you have a service area for offers that have already been created. When you create new offers, you can choose whether to allow a check-in during redemption.

The option is not yet visible within the Places Offers tab. Google recently started purging the free Offers created in Places if they did not offer a real discount of some sort. Perhaps that was in anticipation of Google + integration of check-in.

View the original article here

The ability to provide a Google check-in offer is now live. The feature has been added to the Offer coupon creation option in the Google Places dashboard and a detailed help file has been added to Places for Business Help area. Google describes the process as follows:

If your customers do not have to visit your location, for example if you serve homes or businesses by delivery or by callouts, you can keep this option off (set to “No”) and customers will not be asked to check-in when they redeem offers. We use the Service Areas and Location Settings setting on your listing to determine if you have a service area for offers that have already been created. When you create a new offer, you can choose whether to allow a check-in during redemption.

How can check-ins help my business?
Check-ins are a good way to promote your business online. It’s like an online tool for word of mouth advertising. It also associates the use of an offer with your physical location which helps connect customers both online and offline.

How much does it cost to upload an offer into Google Places?
It’s free for merchants to upload an offer into Google Places.

Will other people see my customers’ check-ins to my business?
Your customers will choose who see their check-ins on Google+. If check-ins are public, anyone can see them. If check-ins are shared with a circle, a smaller group such as the family or coworkers will see them. If check-ins are private, only the customer can see them.

If I ask users to check-in when they redeem an offer, do people have to check-in?
Customers who use Google products that support offers and check-ins (currently Google Maps for Mobile on Android) will have to check-in when they redeem an offer. Customers can choose which circles they share their check-in with.

Which products can ask users to check-in?
Currently, Google Maps for Mobile on Android will ask customers to check-in before they use an offer. Other mobile products that have offers (such as the Google Offers for Android) will soon ask users to check-in as well.

The process to create a check-in offer is very simple. Select the Offers tab in the Places dashboard and answer the last question in the affirmative:

Coupon offers have had a checkered past within Google Places.This is the first time since the creations of Places Offer coupons that a meaningful way to surface them has been presented. As a check-in offer they don’t really function to drive new traffic and they target customers that are already at your location. As such it makes sense to try them as a way to increase upsells and possibly to promote new services that your customer might not be aware of.

The ability for customers to share them via Google + is interesting but discovery is limited by the fact that they are only visible when a customer visits and are currently can only be seen on Google Maps for Mobile on Android. No iPhone option currently exists that I know of.

Google + is only integrated to the extent that a user can share the coupon with their circles. There is no way to currently to easily promote the coupon via a business + page although it is possible.

The bottom line? Coupons may have a life yet at Google as a way to offer a more granular user shopping experience. This baby step to exposing them helps but not as much as one might hope for. There’s always tomorrow.

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Google seems to be adding Plus content just about every place these days and folks are none too happy about it. It seems that they have now added it to the search suggestions as well (this may have been seen perviously but this is the first I had seen it.). Now that’s annoying…and it gets more so the more people you follow on Plus.

No comments yet.

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29Prime is easy to spot as a deceptive local seo company that preys on unsuspecting small business folks eager to “be on the first page of Google”. Like many low-life firms of their ilk, they have a number of “aliases” (aka 29Live, 29Maps, 29SEM, 29Search, Locallistings.com etc, etc.) they use to make tracking them a little more difficult.

Their robo calls ring into my office no less than 4 times a week with pitches like “Select one now to claim your free listing on Google”, “We are Google’s 6th largest provider of data”, “We guarantee first page placement, “We are Google Authorized to claim your listing”.

As coffee break sport, I often select 1 on the dial pad just to hear the pitch and see how befuddled I can make the salesman by asking for verification of the claims… and of course to learn that free is relative. In this case it means $399 a month.

If there is any doubt in your mind about how despicable 29Prime is you can check out some of these online resources that should quickly convince you.

* their D+ rating at Better Business Bureau and the many disputes.
* More than one independent 29Prime is a scam website or
* this article about the roving reporter in Gilbert AZ claiming to have helped a small preschool get their erroneously charged $1500 back from 29Prime.

But this article isn’t about wondering how a business like this can continue to operate in our lax regulatory/enforcement environment. It isn’t about the myth of efficiency in the markets or how SMBs could continue to be duped by them. It isn’t about how is it conceivable that a company like Google has yet to have their lawyers muzzle 29Prime’s claims to be Google or act on their behalf. Or about how a company like this could be mentioned in the SF Chronicle as a top ranked Local SEO firm.

These are all interesting stories in their own right but not the focus of this article.

This story is about comparing how Yelp and Google handle 29Prime’s star rankings and present the results to the public. This story is asking how, after 4 years in the review business,  Google gets it very  wrong and Yelp seems to get 29Prime’s review standing right.
Yelp, as you can see clearly identifies 29Prime for what it is; a company not worthy of anything but the lowest possible rating. Google on the other hand, awards them a 3.5 star rating, enough to allow an unsuspecting smb to agree to give them money.

Google has 51 reviews for them. Yelp has 106. We have no idea if Google has removed any but it is clear that Yelp has filtered out 95 of the reviews as untrustworthy. The sock puppets are clearly winning at Google but seem to have been held at bay at Yelp.

Since Google is unlikely to respond to me publicly I have fabricated a conversation with them about this issue:
Google might say: This is just an anecdote and a single case, our large, scale statistical approach gets thousands of other cases like this right.

I would respond: Google, there are plenty of similar examples of sock puppet reviews that are trivial to spot and yet you seem to not be able to identify them correctly. Even if they are a small percentage the possibility of  public harm is very real.

Google might say: We are inoculating our spam filters by allowing bogus reviews in and soon, very soon our ago will know all there is to know about bad actors and bad actions in the world of reviews.

I would say: Enough with the innoculation already. The eggregious cases of positive review spam are everywhere and time has come and passed for your review filters to be up to the task of properly sorting out this sort of behavior. If Yelp has a transparent filtering process in place, what exactly are you waiting for?

Google might say: We don’t show SEO firms on the main search results just because of this sort of abuse.

I would say: If they can buy their way to the top of the page and highlight their bogus reviews, what difference does it make? It looks legit to most searchers.

Google might say: We have other engineering priorities that come before getting our review system working properly.

I would say: Either you are in the review business or you are not. If you are, then it is time to double down in the review space and make your product worthy of your name.

Google’s current strategy for (not) filtering sock puppet reviews allows scammers and criminals to appear as honest brokers on the front page of Google.

At the end of the day this story is about how Google, in failing to properly prevent fake reviews, is effectively aiding and abetting 29Prime’s (criminal?) deceptions. Even though my story is anecdotal, this story is about how Google, in their rush to get into the review business, does not yet have their review act together fours + years on.

This isn’t just hurting Google. More importantly it is hurting the public as well.

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