These tales of Google giveth and Google taketh away are becoming increasingly common … and it’s always curious to see the range of reactions that they elicit.
According to its own account of the matter, a small London outfit called Wolf Software saw its sales of barcode software plummet so precipitously after a corresponding drop in Google-directed traffic that they decided to simply stop selling the product and release it into the public domain. From their post:
For the past 10 or so years we have been selling our barcode software over the internet. … Most customers came to us through Google and other search engines. The resulting traffic lead to 20-30 sales every day, give or take, making for a nice revenue. Owing to Google’s market share, the majority of visitors, roughly 90%, came through Google.com, Yahoo and MSN being a distant second and third. We also had a considerable advertising budget with Google AdWords, at times approaching five digits per month.
Over the past months, however, organic traffic from Google.com dropped from an average of 1,000 or so visitors / day to exactly zero. In sympathy, sales dropped along side, resulting in perhaps one or two sales per day or less. For some reasons our pages were either removed completely from Google’s index or have been tagged “supplemental result.” Obviously, we could still pay for ads but that would never make up for the loss in traffic and, hence, revenue.
Anyway, the resulting revenue from the current sales is far too low to maintain this site, to continue development of the software and to provide customers with good, useful, timely, and free support. We have therefore decided to call it quits and release all our barcode software into the Public Domain.
I’ve asked Google to respond to the company’s account of events, but the alacrity that Google applies to delivering search results has never been emulated by the company’s public relations department.
The Wolf Software episode has caught the attention of readers over at Reddit: Many are less than believing and/or less than sympathetic, although Google certainly takes its lumps, too.
This type of situation has kept Google lawyers busy, witness the KinderStart case, and the company has so far done well in defending itself.
Welcome regulars and passersby. Here are a few more recent Buzzblog items. And, if you’d like to receive Buzzblog via e-mail newsletter, here’s where to sign up.
How free Web hosters profit from phishing.
FCC cracks down on “pretexting” (although a bit too late for HP’s sake).
$20 billion can’t buy a conference call.
Newspaper pulls plug on “Anti-Christ” contributor.
Blogger’s screwup, lemming-like media spread false report about Edwards campaign.
Maker of anti-Clinton ‘Net ad revealed, linked to Obama, now jobless
The Onion tees up Vista … hilarity fails to ensue.
