I can't image this post will be popular here but the most critical "thing" that we are giving Google is "power" (in terms of depandance, and giving up and transferring control).
For example, online businesses are now completely dependent on Google services via Paid and Organic search traffic.
Since Google brings in about 95-99% of your (search) visitors, what would happen if tomorrow...
A) Your AdWords account becomes "permanently suspended"?
B) Your website is dropped from the index.
C) Your website's Analytics data is sold to a competitor, or is used by Google internally to further some other business of theirs at your expense.
I've seen the first two happen to people who were not spammers, they simply tripped up some filter (Google's error).
One was selling a product/service that interfaced with Apache, PHP, and MySQL. Someone at Google decided they where selling "free" items (an AdWords violation).
The other had his content taken by a content farm, Google dropped him from the index.
And contacting Google was met with this response...
"I do understand your point of view and apologize for any inconvenience this may cause, but unfortunately we cannot provide any further assistance in this matter."
(direct quote from my correspondence.)
A few years back there was also some talk about how employees where encouraged to use "free" AdWords credits to set up their own businesses. Imagine getting $1 million worth of credits to compete with some other AdWords customer?
http://www.googlelady.com/23/outrage-over-google-employees-a...
For example, online businesses are now completely dependent on Google services via Paid and Organic search traffic.
Since Google brings in about 95-99% of your (search) visitors, what would happen if tomorrow...
A) Your AdWords account becomes "permanently suspended"?
B) Your website is dropped from the index.
C) Your website's Analytics data is sold to a competitor, or is used by Google internally to further some other business of theirs at your expense.
I've seen the first two happen to people who were not spammers, they simply tripped up some filter (Google's error).
One was selling a product/service that interfaced with Apache, PHP, and MySQL. Someone at Google decided they where selling "free" items (an AdWords violation).
The other had his content taken by a content farm, Google dropped him from the index.
And contacting Google was met with this response...
(direct quote from my correspondence.)A few years back there was also some talk about how employees where encouraged to use "free" AdWords credits to set up their own businesses. Imagine getting $1 million worth of credits to compete with some other AdWords customer? http://www.googlelady.com/23/outrage-over-google-employees-a...