For years now, Google’s Search Engine Head Guru Matt Cutts has been tasked with being the mega-corporation’s “kindler, gentler” public face, reinforcing the company’s stance that their algorithm modifications are always performed to improve the search results and to ensure that no one is “gaming” the system. This long-standing approach and the impeccable “above the fray” image that Cutts has been able to very successfully portray through a considerable portion of this century took a rather severe hit when he stated, “We actually think our ads can be as helpful as the search results in some cases. And no, that’s not a new attitude.”

Cutts Has Projected a Pseudo-Angelic Image for Years

Although a disproportionate number of web users would like to think otherwise, Google is not some appointed regulatory force that has been charged with the unbiased task of wisely apportioning search engine technology for the good of all humanity, but a publicly traded corporation whose business is to make money for its shareholders. The way that Google makes money through its search engine is by selling ads, and therefore that is its primary business goal. Cutts’ ability to project a pseudo-angelic image that shows him as being at arms’ length from the commercial aspects of the search engine were untenable from the beginning and it is a testament to his skill as a spokesperson that he was able to deflect the inevitable for so many years.

Any position that is not unquestionably based upon absolute truths is bound to crumble and collapse eventually and thus Cutts now finds himself being barraged with accusations that he and the program he administers are puppets of the Googleplex’s advertising department.

With Enough Money Anyone Can Commandeer Any Top Keyword

The statement that ads are of equivalent value to organic results is a fundamental misinterpretation of the reality of the advertising and search engine businesses due to the time-honored and unquestioned tenet that money talks. Anyone who has just won a sizeable lottery prize can dominate just about any top keyword in Google. Therefore if a suitably mischievous millionaire decided to get their lolz by hijacking any search engine concept they preferred, drawing cat queries to dogs or hat queries to shoes, Google would be happy to comply… as long as the check was big enough. What we would then be in the process of witnessing would be the wholesale demolition of the entire value of a search engine, which is to direct users to the best available content on that topic, replaced by the content that was most highly paid for.

Cutts Has Admitted What Many Have Known All Along

There is no need to reach the extremes of the mischievous millionaire scenario to comprehend the essential corporate tilt towards making money at the expense of its core product, which Cutts has now for all intents and purposes admitted to. Even his secondary line about it not being a new attitude is fully telling. In the wake of the seismic changes brought to a large portion of the web through Google’s Farmer, Panda and Penguin algorithm modifications Cutts had always stood out as a justifier of the chaos wrought by playing the card of impeccable ethics. Google needed to make these changes to ensure an equal playing field for all and to keep particular types of content from gaining an inordinate skew over fully impartial organic results based on the sheer quality of the content, and nothing else. Even though this will not come as any surprise to the more skeptical observers in the online community, Cutts has now admitted that it’s all about the Benjamins, and it’s been that way all along. If anyone still was left with the illusion that Do No Evil still applied then all that needs to be added to that infamous motto is: As Long As You Make Money.

Santa Claus brings toys, the Easter Bunny hides chocolate eggs, and Google rewards quality content for its own sake. Yes, Virginia, there is a Googleplex, and it wasn’t built on the fantasies of childish imagination but on big stacks of dollar bills.