Whats going on with Google

In my eyes Google managed to go from hero to zero in less than a day!

Yesterday reports on how Google China reacted to being hacked by showing censored material from its SERPs then offends the English language by reverting to Americanised spelling of British words in the UK SERPs!

China's government is ruled by censorship and although they are trying to give the impression of an evolving modern community, China has to put up with cyber police who ensure any material on censored subjects does not show up.

Apparently Google was hacked into by the Chinese Government, trying to access human rights activists' Gmail accounts and responded by listing material the government had banned in its search engines.

Google China has never had the market share in the Chinese search engines but was still used, apparently by showing such materials Google is risking being banned themselves! I am pleased for Google that they seemed to take a stand against this big brother society (quite ironic due to Google's own dominance in some areas) and also pleased it has drawn attention and awareness to other societies.

Yeah Google!!

Wait, don't get too excited, only hours after these first reports I (and many other Internet explorers) noticed some discrepancies in the Google UK SERPs, if I searched for search engine optimisation I was showed American results for search engine optimization, a small difference in spelling but a big F- You to English language!

This not only degrades our culture but reinforces the opinion of American spelling being the norm whereas in history this is not the case but just colloquial versions of our own standards - Yes I did English A level lol. This is not just Britain but other English speaking countries such as Australia are being pushed into results only relevant to Americans.

This totally contradicts Google's personalised search results and the whole purpose of having geo locations and geo targeting in search engines. Why bother using ip recognition to direct us to correct search engines if you are only going to show us American results any way!? And is this the service you expect to keep a market share in the UK showing irrelevant results to a whole nation!

Having a 70% + Market share is one thing but if you give us random American results then do not expect to keep it! I can see Bing in the corner rubbing their hands saying 'I love it when a plan comes together!'

I hope Google gets this sorted as it is my Search Engine of choice but they have obviously launched new crawlers without testing thoroughly enough in markets other than the US. Simply not good enough!

Perhaps Google china was not a purposeful rebellion against the Chinese government but just standardisation to the good old American way!

Y'all come back now ya hear!!