Google Using Its Dominant Market Position For Benefit Of Users; Here's How

It was recently revealed that Google Inc GOOGL is making changes to its search algorithm to determine whether a website is mobile friendly or not.

Dan Costa, Editor-in-Chief of PC Magazine, was on CNBC Tuesday to weigh in on this.

Real Impact On Bottom-Line

“Google did give us two month worth of notice saying that they were going to do this and their goal is a noble one,” Costa said. “They want the user to see mobile friendly websites when they search on mobile devices, that makes a lot of sense, but the bottom-line is lot of these companies and especially small businesses just haven’t made this step.”

He continued, “Some of the testing shows that as many as 40 percent of all of the websites on the web right now don’t meet Google’s guidelines and the question is how far down are those results going to get pushed. If you get pushed to the second page of search results that can have a real impact on a business’s bottom-line.”

Google Using Its Dominance

Costa was asked that even though making more sites mobile-friendly is a good thing, doesn’t he feel that Google is forcing websites to do so. He replied, “It’s hard to think of another company other than Google that could push the market like this. It really reminds me of days when Microsoft would lead the software industry on the PC side.”

“Google can do that now with web standards. So, just by making this, it could be a very small change in their algorithm. They can affect a lot of change and I know they are causing businesses to actually upgrade their sites to create mobile versions to enhance the mobile experience, so the user may win out here,” Costa concluded.