GoogleGifWith a company as big as Google, it’s easy to nit-pick.

When you look closely enough, you find problems. Imagine that, when you go on a hunt for mistakes, you find them.

The question often arises: When does Google lose focus on the user? As mentioned above, with a company as big and domineering as Google, on its face one could easily proclaim that, and most would agree.

But think about that for longer than a second and it doesn’t make much sense.

Aside from money and world domination, the point of Google is the user. From the whole concept of Google and the search engine, the user is why the company exists. Until 2007, people didn’t use Google that much. Now, you’re in the minority if you don’t regularly use at least one or all of the services the company provides.

Google has its fingers in just about everything, and it dominates. Let’s look at Google Maps. The company does not make money on this service. Now, does Google provide the service out of the kindness of its heart or because it wants even more of the Internet pie and keep the competition from having a puncher’s chance?

It is imperative for companies like Google to focus on the user. To ensure the products that they have work properly and efficiently but also to not allow the user to consider an ulterior product. Google has done that better than anyone since its dominated the industry, and the world.

Whether it still does that is up for debate. So perhaps the better question: Is Google user-focused today?

As we speak, Google is so hell-bent on owning the world, the customer is secondary. Of course, by saying that a penguin and panda have been deployed to implement total destruction.

Look at the emphasis the company is currently putting on Google+. The purpose is to take control from Facebook and eventually own the title of “social network king.” As noted in this article, http://qz.com/161529/google-sincerely-thinks-that-google-is-the-future-of-google/, Google has far from given up the goal to win the battle of social network.

That’s why the company is turning Google+ into a platform on which the rest of Google’s services are evolving and used. Notice how when you do a Google search, the results clutter with Google+ results? That’s not a coincidence.

There is some basis to the notion that people are adopting Google+ for authorship. And people have been re-energized in their interest in authorship because of the Hummingbird update, which is tied to Knowledge Graph. But that’s too simple and doesn’t “search” deep enough. Look deeper with what you know about basic economics and history.

Google’s emphasis of Google+ is to own the Internet and to make even more money. They are all but forcing people to have a Google+ account if they want to remain credible and “authorized.” Even if they don’t want to, people don’t have much of a choice; especially for those in SEO.

That’s when and why a company like Google loses sight of the user. Google hasn’t and probably never will have a flat or down quarter. The company is too smart for that. But when a company becomes so power and money hungry that’s when the customer plays second fiddle.

As proven throughout time, when one gets a taste of power and money, they want more. When they get more, they want more. As historian and moralist John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton wrote in a letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton in 1887 http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/absolute-power-corrupts-absolutely.html. “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” As long as there is no check, one is left to do what it wants, when it wants and how it wants – in this case, Google.

The results will continue to benefit the customer. After all, Google, in theory, is based on the user. At least before the company got a taste of power and money.

So perhaps the better question: Has Google become too greedy?