Google As Dictator: 5 Most Devious Things It Could Do, If It Were Evil

This point of view gets my hackles up.

All of the fears surround Google doing something to "punish" people who are not behaving in a Google-profit-optimizing way. But punishment as deterrent (to people using WordPress instead of Blogger for example) only works if everyone knows - otherwise how can they be deterred from their non-profitable (for Google) behavior?

But if everyone knows Google is borking their search results like that, they'll just use Yahoo, or more likely that new search engine those crazy kids from the valley just wrote. (You know, the ones on the cover of the May 2009 Wired.) Then Google will stop doing whatever evil they're doing, because it's costing advertising revenue. (But it will be too late.)

These sorts of FUD articles have the veneer of rationality and healthy skepticism, but they're really rooted in a fear of success and, often, a cynical attitude that the truly successful only become so by stomping other people.

Trust the market.