More than money, more than anything I enjoy the sharing of knowledge that the Internet has given us. I've been a fan-girl of Google for longer than I can remember. A company who I've imagined being one that launches each update in a NASA type launch center with the pomp and circumstance of children in their imaginations. After all, they, like me, I believe they are people who see the world a little bit differently, or at least that's what I thought. Google always seemed like a group of very smart people whose goal in life was to do good, a geek missionary group to change the world for the better. I started noticing a change for the worse about a year or so prior to Panda. Little things in their programs that would go on for months broken or obvious quarks in their Chrome OS. Things started to make little sense. Nasa is going bankrupt and Google's shares are several hundred dollars but yet their CR-48 can't post on Facebook? (Mine still struggles to play Youtube videos.) I had faith as it didn't really affect my life all that much. Minor nuisances from a once precise product. After all I was busy, back in college pursuing a degree while raising two children. That's when Panda hit. Immediately I tried to find out what went wrong. My income, my goals of graduating started to look in peril as my life's work online seemed to become less important than a cat behind the piano or information on how to dye your hair pink. While I often don't doubt America itself is at times as "simple" as LOLCATS, the bottom line is it's hard to believe that what Panda did is what engineers and doctors would choose to represent as quality content on the Internet. So I expected change. I expected a company to right its wrong when it made a mistake, but then in the weeks that followed all we heard was "It was working as expected." Surely not? Surely someone spiked the Panda cake with too much pride?
So time goes on. Thirty days becomes sixty, then ninety. Major news outlets question the decision, forums are filled with examples of poor SERPs but the Google remains silent. In a time in which we're suffering the biggest economic depression in 70 years, Google a company that prides itself on good destroyed the livelihood of thousands of people and businesses. Even Doctor Who gives the aliens a chance to redeem themselves before destroying them. Isn't that what goodness is about. The chance to be redeemed?
Of course there are those who see this whole thing as infinite genius, they play their parts as members of the cult of stupid suggesting Google is superlative, without fault. No one is perfect, especially capitalistic American companies whom are heavily under the pressure of investors while being knifed in the lung by Microsoft's Bing. Except that's the point. Is the Panda merely a metaphor for good and evil, of black and white? (Somebody at the Plex watches way too much LOST.) Surely it's this moment in time which will ultimately decide if Google as a company becomes like its rivals or stands by its principles and does whats right and fix whats wrong?
So we await.... Google's Panda 2.2 update. Redemption? A new hope for internetkind?
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