I know that is a shocking and controversial headline, but there are a number of serious points to be made. Firstly I like linking to people who link to me, whether on the post they first wrote, or on the syndicated copy that now appears on SEOmoz, even when the name referenced is "Andy Beal". Google is going to have a hard time deciding which is duplicate content, and will probably pick the SEOmoz article because it is the domain with the most authority. If you syndicate articles or blog posts, make sure they link back to the original version, whichever you consider original. I am not going to help Google, as I have linked to both.
Android vs Blackberry Smartphones
I probably know as much about smartphones as Matt Cutts does about... poodles (he is a cat lover) I have a SIMM card with a 7 mbps connection, but purely as a backup or for when I am travelling around Poland and am somewhere I can't get good wifi. The SIMM works in one of my wife's cast off mobile phones in an emergency. As detailed in the linked posts, Google gave away lots of Android mobile phones to developers. That is something I am very familiar with - I used to work in the games industry and among other things handled relationships with all the PC Manufacturers. AMD, Intel, Creative Labs, Nvidia, Matrox, etc etc. Even though NDAs have now expired (I think the longest was Intel's at 5 years) I am not going to go into specific details but here are the challenges.
- Developers had to create custom code to support specific features - this could take days, weeks even months.
- The testing teams would have to text code in a matrix, combining various processors with graphics and sound cards
- The support teams would have to create documentation for each possible platform and potential conflicts
In those days we were working with multiple standards, processors had lots of proprietary 3D functions, graphics cards not only had different features, but also different graphics libraries to access them, 3DFX, OpenGL and DirectX, and even sound cards had different features and sound libraries. Some might look on it as a lot of back scratching, but it was a symbiotic relationship - it probably still is. Developers had early access to hardware, sometimes months, even a whole year in advance. Different terms were subject to negotiation, status etc. In exchange there were lots of cross-marketing possibilities, certainly linking happened, but also branding on boxes, adverts, possible lucrative OEM deals etc. Whilst this might seem to favor the larger development studios, and it did in some ways, ultimately small development studios, if they got on board could certainly gain a "leg up" from the hardware guys, and this is something I was very active to encourage. Thus Google giving away a few hundred, even a few 1000 mobile phones is barely a grain of sand compared to what is given out behind the scenes.
Google I/O Was Press
From what I can see, there were tons of press representitives at Google I/O, they received tons of coverage from notable tech blogs. Press have always received free samples of hardware, or at least most have, though many publications have rules about keeping the "gear", auction it off for charity, give it away as prizes etc. In doing so that can help them remain impartial because they are not keeping the item.
Paid Links
The paid links saga of 2007 didn't really clear anything up and effectively swept issues under the table,
with the untouchables remaining untouchable. Michael Gray is forced to
nofollow advertiser links.
Payola or Blogola, whatever you wish to call it still exists, and is practiced by Google.
Affect on Search Results?
When Matt Cutts defends Google's actions because Google doesn't need links, that isn't quite the whole truth. It is quite true that Google doesn't need to rank for "search engine" in Google Here in Poland, a search for "Android" which used to be a very generic term, the first 4 results point to sites about Google's Android operating system. But Google doesn't rank for Mobile Phone, and
even their partner, HTC who made both the G1 and G2 handsets only rank 3rd for smartphone, using US Geolocation and personalized search off (not that I search for this topic... ever),
with Blackberry in 2nd. Actually that was yesterday, looks like HTC now rank 2nd, and Blackberry has been pushed down the results. Here are the current results for various terms:-
