14 DAY TRIAL // As Google is trying to come to terms with the EU and make what concessions it's willing to give, to get the EU probe over with, more Google "competitors" are popping up with claims that Google has done them wrong.
Streetmap, a UK site you haven't heard of, presumably because Google has buried it all the way down to fourth place on its UK search results, where no one will ever find it, has been hurt by Google's abuses.
That's the complaint, at least, in a new lawsuit filed by Streetmap, in which it argues that through "Google's cynical manipulation of search results" its own revolutionary product is "harder to find."
If you do a search for "maps" on Google UK, you get a link to Google Maps UK, followed by a link to Bing Maps, one to the global Google Maps and then, finally, one for Streetmap.
The same search on Bing UK places Google Maps UK at top, followed by Streetmap, the global Google Maps, another link to Google Maps UK for some reason, and then finally by Bing Maps.
Clearly, Google is destroying competition by placing Bing Maps much higher than Bing itself does.
The only surprising thing about all of this is that a site that looks and works like Streetmap is able to rank so well on both Google and Bing. That's probably the clearest sign that the competition in web maps is poor to say the least.
But perhaps Brits love the ghastly pink maps and the feeling of traveling back in time, to a place where the internet was simpler, GIF banner ads were cutting edge technology and Tripod was the hottest thing around, the feeling you get when visiting Streetmap.
Streetmap should probably be thankful to the gods of SEO that it's gotten such high placement and pray that people don't discover that in 2013, there are better alternatives.
Instead it sues Google for "promoting" its own sites instead of promoting Streetmap for free, as should be fair. After all, what's Google's purpose if not to prop up sites that want better ranking.
