Google’s been known to shut down a service or two, especially since the return of Larry Page as CEO as he does a clean sweep of irrelevant apps and services to focus Google’s goals.  But after this week’s rampage against YouTube-MP3.org, we’re reminded that Google won’t hesitate to have a third party service shut down as well.  It’s often a matter of non-compliance, when a service or product is allegedly going against Google’s terms of condition or violates some copyright.  But for Google in particular, the search giant is often slow to act until some corporate head turns on the pressure.

Banning apps

Last year, a lot of gamers were dumbfounded when their favorite game emulators, the apps that transforms their smartphone or tablet into something similar to their favorite gaming console, were pulled from Google Play, then known as Android Market.

Yong Zhang (aka yongzh) was the developer of apps such as the Nesoid, Snesoid, Gensoid, N64oid, Ataroid, Gearoid and Gameboid, all game emulator apps for Android.  And you don’t have to be a genius to guess which consoles they emulate.  After Google got a complaint from Sega, now ready to go mobile, regarding the existence of those game emulators, the apps were pulled from the market.  So Zhang’s primary source of income was taken, leaving him to resort to selling his products in third party Android markets.

But game emulators aren’t the only ones banned on Google’s market.  They’ve shut down the fan-developed app Reddit is Fun as well.  Officially shut down because of pornographic content, some argue that it was unjust because Reddit curates links and should not be held accountable for the content.

Google’s also facilitated certain apps that have been shut down in Google Play.  Network carriers have banned tethering apps so users can no longer turn their smartphones into a WiFi hotspot.  Tethering is when you share your data plan to other devices.  Great for consumers, bad for carriers that have been charging an increasing amount for high-demand data that’s being eaten up by our mobile gadgets.

Tweaking the algorithm

In March, Google shutdown about 800,000 advertisers and blocked over 130 million ads from showing up on their network.  The reason for doing so was to stop rogue advertisers and scammers from flourishing on their network.  But there’s a silver lining in Google’s gray cloud when they changed their YouTube algorithm to end the senseless popularity of “reply girls”.  “Reply girls” are those cleavage-flaunting girls that make videos on YouTube, copies the original tags of popular videos which secures them a spot on the popular video page.  They earn money by getting people to click on their videos.

You might not think there’s anything wrong with this scenario, but it actually accumulates more invalid results on YouTube.  Have you ever had a hard time looking for the original video of your favorite artist because you keep clicking on stupid videos that don’t make any sense?

In an era where Google and others, like Apple, Microsoft, Facebook and Samsung, all fight to build and control their respective ecosystems in the cloud, each must answer to a higher power, be it corporate pressure or consumer safety.  Because when it’s all said and done, mobile apps, video content and search results are readily consumerized products that fall prey to the swells of capitalism whether it’s in the best interest of the end user or not.