I often use ‘Chrome’ if I am expecting to have 20 tabs open or something — I must say, it’s very good for this specific reason. However, I just discovered something a little disconcerting (to me) whilst testing a few things.
Here’s a nice example. I just typed in ‘ANALUTICS’ and it sent me straight to Google Analytics. That seems very presumptuous!? No “Did you mean…?” or any type of alternative, just straight to GA. Isn’t that a bit iffy for many reasons? It’s kind of like hijacking!
I’m loathe to repeat this with lots of phrases, but to my own, probably narrow view, this seems like it could open up all sorts of debates and questions:
- How many words/phrases is this happening with?
- Does this mean Google is totally focused on owning everything that it has a self-interest in and won’t give any due credit to any other website or authority out there?
- Is this practice clear to users of the browser?( i.e., “We may not return unbiased results for natural typed searches”)
- Do they have the right to ‘own’ this/these keyword(s)?
I’m aware that many might say it is their browser so they can do what they like, but I wonder…well, I wonder lots of things about the implications of this. I wasn’t aware of this particular practice myself and I do tend to look at the small print more than others.
So, am I just paranoid or does this seem a tad wrong to you?
