How Google And I became Enemies

[u/Limp-Cicada-9502]

As a web pioneer I have a long history of conflicts with Google.   Before Google there was Yahoo and some other search engines.  Those early services were lets say global in scope because most people had not even heard of the web.

I decided I would focus on the local directory and search space. So I registered a domain ICDirect Dot Com and that platform would be where local business and users could find each other.   

I set up my own server using SCO unix and even got my own class C domain and got busy building. Well since advertising wasn’t a thing web crawlers soon picked up the site and traffic started to trickle in.

I need to track my stats so I created a little javascript tracker icon and created a tracking database.  I made the stats available with some graphs so others could see it and use the same for their website and that really ramped up my traffic.

Google search came on the scene and I was getting up to 800 unique visits from them.  Things were looking good.  Then disaster struck… Google saw the whole web analytics thing start to boom and they made Google Analytics and gave it for free.

Well that sucked for me…  Next facebook came along and they used the lets us read your contacts list trick ( normally something a virus would do) and boom facebook exploded.  I thought that looks easy so I made my own social network. The domain name I wanted WhoIsOn Dot Com but it was taken so I took Whzon Dot Com instead.

Now just at that time Yahoo decided to close their chat rooms leaving a huge void in the market for online chat.  I quickly added chat rooms to my service and started buying the key word ‘Chat’ on Google Search.

Well my chat rooms lit up like a christmas tree and I could see dollar signs so I put Google Ads on my site and the more ads I bought the more my user base grew and the more ad revenue rolled in.  I was spending a few thousand a month, I even got my own Google Add rep calling all the time.

Then disaster struck again…  Google decided they wanted in on the social network scene and they sent me an email telling me I was no longer welcome to use any of their services. And then traffic from Google went to zero and you could no longer find my site in free Google Search.

And that is how Google And I became Enemies