Caught in the act, Google Japan has been caught paying bloggers to say nice things about a new search widget via a Cyberbuzz Campaign, wait…what?

Techcrunch breaks this one, and like many companies that are paying people to say nice things about them (Belkin comes to mind) as a form of astroturfing a business into popularity or wider adoption. While this is a marketing process, and people are fully disclosing, techcrunch hits the nail on the head when they say:

It’s interesting to see that Google, a company that not too long ago radically took action against PayPerPost bloggers in the US, today thinks the concept is suitable as long as it helps them advance in Japan (even though in Japan, pay-per-post isn’t regarded nearly as obnoxious as in the US). Source: Techcrunch

It is not so much that they are doing something, but what it makes it look like is what is good for google is not good for payperpost/Izea right now. Which makes this interesting, will Google in turn then lower all the page ranks of those who are participating in the Cyberbuzz campaign, or will they simply ignore this one.

Far too many questions on this one, and between Google quietly laying off engineers, closing offices, and a host of other things, Google is starting to raise some serious questions about what they are doing. The old catch phrase “do not be evil” should be buried at this point, from all intents and purposes, the “needs of business and shareholders” are going to and are trumping the egalitarian statement “do not be evil”.

Tags: Google, japan, cyberbuzz, payperpost, questions, raise, who is google, izea

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