Something big is happening in Internet. Something that worries me.

Google, number one search engine in the web, has an undisputable monopoly in search. It has gained it deservedly, providing high quality results for years.

But Google wants to take another market, the social. That’s not a recent desire, they have tried many times to beat Facebook. They haven’t succeeded so far: the most recent and evident flops were called Buzz and Wave. Both closed.

Then arrived Plus. Following a big launch and really encouraging results at the beginning, there was a stop. Many people registered, tested it, but went back to Facebook.

Another failure? At Google they don’t seem to be available to accept it, not this time. This is why a new program started few days ago: Search Plus Your World.

The object of this article, the reason why I am worried.

It is already available on the english home page. SPYW integrates the classic results found on the web with others found in the social network. What social network? Plus, of course. Not Facebook or Twitter.

SPYW is giving relevance to empty and inexpressive pluspages, that are now placed among the best results.

In this way Google is giving preference to its own product, rather than providing fair results based on real valuable contents in the web.

They do that by violating their own algoritm Panda.

Theorethically, Panda was adopted to find sites with good content, and to target those with poor content. Many web publishers have been hit badly by it in terms of traffic, and had to work hard to align with the algorithm.

Practically, it is now evident that Panda is not applied to all web sites. Not to their Plus.

There are many reasons why I don’t like this, in particular:

• It is against every antitrust law. It is ok if Google has a monopoly in search, because they have earned it. It is not ok if Google leverages this monopoly to win a different market, the social. Web users aren’t accepting Plus as an alternative to Facebook, there’s no right to make them swallow the product this way.

• This will cause poorer results. Pluspages are being pushed on the top of the pile, even if they have little content, or no content at all. This is a risky move for Google itself. There’s no huge obstacle to switch from Google to other search engines. If they keep going on with SPYW and it will mean a noticeable deterioration, web users will move somewhere else.

• This disadvantages little publishers (that’s something I want, or wanted, to become). Their valuable sites will be penalized because Google will direct a consistent portion of the traffic to itself.

There is no reason to accept that.

I love Google, I have used many of their amazing services: the search, Gmail, Maps, Youtube. I have suggested my relatives and friends to use them because they were quality products.

But this is a change in a dangerous direction. A change that could lead to a big loss of freedom in Internet.

SPYW is already under examination by the antitrust institutions, I hope they will fight back this attempt before the program develops further.

If Google has to dominate both the search market and the social market, this has to happen due to their merits. But until they use this politic, I am not using their engine anymore. Not an engine with this kind of functionality set as default.

I am with Bing now, my Plus account is deleted, and I am not returning to Google until I see this case solved.