Interesting read on how Google certainly has become a very influential entity and why more and more people are beginning to be disgruntled with it.

Is Google's growth provoking a backlash? Industry observers are beginning to think so. A few years ago, they note, it was difficult to find anyone who didn't worship Google, but now many people have a beef with the firm. Some of the complaints are obviously self-serving and maybe even dismissible -- such as those from the Chinese government, say, or the Church of Scientology. But the ire of other groups has more heft. In recent months, the question of how Google should index blogs has become a hot topic online. Google has been attacked by some critics who say the search engine gives blogs too much weight, and others who say it's not giving blogs their due. Then there are webmasters and people in the "search engine optimization" industry, folks whose livelihoods depend on ranking well in Google. With so much riding on the whims of one firm, these people are constantly, pedantically, obsessed with and irritated at Google, sometimes, as in Massa's case, to the point of litigation.

As a side note, this article cites the 15th as having been the point where the funkness with Google's index went back to the way it had been.. I _fully_ agree. The difference in traffic coming from Google before and after the 15th is night and day. Enough to effect MemeStreams overall stats by almost 50%. (Based on our unique visitor count for the week 9-13 vs 16-20) This was the first month in MemeStream's history our traffic was down.. Of course, post the 15th, its back to normal, and climbing every day. Clearly Google has one hell of an effect on sites like this one.

The Google Backlash