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[universal4]

Maybe governements in different countries need to start making policy to give preferential treatment to search engines with corporate ownership based in those countries.

I think it is wrong on so many levels that the Big G would do this since it is NOT fair to hosts that serve a global market.

Google claims they are fair to all site owners, but then this policy shows they aren't....

So, do they want to known as fair or not?

Rick
Universal4

[xecutable]

We are now able to buy and sell goods and services to people regardless of locations more easily than ever before and yet search engines don't seem to understand this concept.

I doubt they don't understand it, they just pretend not to. I think you even said the answer in your question global economy. After all Big G is a private company and looks after its own interests. But you know what sad, there r no Search Engines, plural. It's just THE Search Engine, Google. But hey, the whole world is like that. I remember in 2004-5 when Pentium 4 came out with 3.5-3.7GHz processor and everyone was expecting 10 Ghz by 2010, and what happened? They switched technology, duo cores, quad cores came out and for ? Half of the advantages are on paper as most programs/games/systems sit optimized for single core processors.

So, do they want to known as fair or not?

Fair ? God went to Adam with Eve and told him "Pick a wife" . Google does the same they announce their algorithm, tell you that your site places better with UK hosting if you target UK clients and then tell you "Choose a hosting company, all over the world"

How many times was MS fined by the EU for enforcing IE and Windows Media Player on Windows users? A lot until they start shipping without those 2. I am pretty sure if enough claims start hitting their office for Google "forcing" webmasters to "pick" hosting company based on region. The problem is that it only affects us the webmasters, what does the searcher care?

BTW how many people see in their statistics search engineS, cause I see 87% Google, 6% Yahoo, 5% Bing, 2% others like ask,search,yandex aol. *cough* monopoly *cough*

Wiki definition:

In economics, a monopoly (from Greek monos / μονος (alone or single) + polein / πωλειν (to sell)) exists when a specific individual or an enterprise has sufficient control over a particular product or service to determine significantly the terms on which other individuals shall have access to it

Don't get me wrong Google is my homepage and I use it for everything, but if I get disappointed what fallback options do I have? Yahoo ha? Bing even bigger ha?

[jarvi]

I'd forgotten about the rules in certain countries with registering domains too, even though Australia has a few of them.

Last thing I saw earlier this week was Google had something like 65% of the market share so it's difficult to ignore that high number. Might have been an article about the DOJ investigating them in relation to their search results and potential manipulation etc.

Rick, Ireland would do well with your suggestion because I think a lot of Google's business is based there for legal and accounting reasons. They are not the only ones with a structure that places more of the business in a few European countries.