The Google struggle has been an uncomfortable, adversarial relationship with information providers almost since the iDawnOfTime. We were smacked a couple times during algo changes that took us from up at the top to nowhere to be seen. I agree that if you rely 100% on Google for your traffic (ergo your primary revenue stream) you're asking for pain. But on the flip side, there are lots of solid businesses that have been built around the notion of search and it pissed me off that Google has such utter control of people's livelihood.
In about 2006, mid-December, Google decided it didn't like the way we presented our pages for one of our websites. Not spam, not AdSense pages, not miscellaneous content crap. Good stuff that provided a real benefit to cancer patients. We dropped 92% in traffic over the course of 3 days. The business was over. Essentially, because Google didn't like something, that business went tits up (it didn't, actually, it has maintained on a shoestring since then but it has never been prominent as it was). Where we went from donating on the order of about 60K/year to local breast cancer services, we're lucky if it's 2-5K now. It is difficult to find a way towards a silver lining for that business, other than it was a call to action for PinkHat and myself to get out.
The worst part is that there is no appeal process, no contact help line, not much at all that can really be used to fight your case - there's just too much for the Googleoids to do (As it happened, Matt Cutts was at a black hat function in Vegas a couple years ago and he recognized my nick. I plead my case and we were reinstated the next day).
I don't mind the struggle, I don't mind the dance. I don't mind the competition. But it's similar to the yellow pages saying, after you've already purchased your ad, that now things are going to be sorted by the digits in your address rather than your corporate name. No warning, no ruleset, nothing.
Pisses me off.
