Today is a great day to be... not Google. As someone who's spoken out many times against Google and its practices, I'm very happy today. This is not a simple ranting post, so please bear with me as I explain away the smile. Two reasons to be smiling:

• Google slapped their most vocal supporters in the face. Actually, they kicked them in the groin and when they went down, Google took a big stick and hit them on the head. Yes, it's the PR "downdate" (getit?) of today. I'll explain why this is a stupid move (if it's not a glitch).
• Google lost out to Microsoft today. Ironically, it just proves that as prying as Google wants to be by targeting ads to users, there are others willing to be even more 'evil' (for the lack of a more descriptive word). It really does seem that old-skool pre-Web companies may still be able to teach G a thing or two.

First the PR update. There is no evidence to suggest that this is due to link selling. There is no evidence to suggest it's a vandetta against people who've spoken against Big G. It could be a glitch, but my favorite theory: ALL toolbar PR will drop to zero. Why? The publicly visible PR has always been a thorn in Google's back: everyone watches it, people use it to assert authority, people try to manipulate it, and worst of all, it created a market because it's in a finite supply.

I also think the visible PR kick-started a mentality of not linking. When it started, it was "I don't want PR to leak" and so people said "leak it for $$$". People saw that this was working well as a money source and worth it as an investment for both traffic, PR, and rankings. So Google responded, half-heartedly, by delaying the publication of the true PR but a few months. That was annoying but it worked. What it also meant that on some (most?) valuable sites, getting a link was virtually impossible without forking over some cash.

Next came the mangling of nofollow. It first started as this innocent anti-spam measure. Yeah, right. As if that was ever going to deter spammers (just ask the email spam filter companies). If anything, that made spammers get more creative and we're still happily getting spammed. So now we had this kinda useless tool until some genius figured it out: it can manage the flow of PR in a site. Heck, I can now even link out to other sites I wouldn't have because I can tell Google to ignore the link. Think about that: I am actively linking to a website while at the same time sending a message to Google that I don't trust said site. Hypocrisy at it's finest, all thanks to Google.

As you can imagine, this is not a stable situation. Eventually, a drastic measure would be needed to fix it. The most obvious one? Kill the visible PR. Take out the symptoms and the disease. What happens if you make all PR in the world zero? It will become useless. You take away the commodity that's being traded. And hopefully, you'll save the net from the mess you created by freeing people about worries of linking to each other again. The corollary to that is nuking nofollow, which I honestly believe is also required. However, let me be the first to note there is no evidence of this happening. None.

So let us for a moment assume that today's PR update (which hit eKstreme.com, by the way) is not a glitch. Let's assume it's a planned move, which would include a PR algo update. What does it mean?

• One possibility is that all PR is going down to zero, as I think it eventually will. Only time will tell if this is true or not.
• Another possibility is that Google is penalizing people, either with a biased algo update or with manual intervention. If so, why on Earth hit the people who speak about the company the most? In all markets, especially techie ones, there is an adoption curve: there are the pioneers who are the most addicted to your product, who will speak about you in holy terms, and who will infect everyone around them to use your product. Successful startups sell to these people first, and established companies make sure these guys and gals are happy. Keep this free loud-speaker marketing channel happy, and you'll be happy. Google just made this group of people unhappy. Google has stepped over the line. People are furious. Google will pay. How? We will start seeing Google for what it really is: an ad agency out to make a buck - a boring company! - not some "not evil" librarian out to index the world. This is the first step to people switching away from Google. This is the first step to Google losing its grip. And you know what? The competition would be willing to take on these refugees.

Anyway, I've rambled on this too much. On to the Google-Microsoft-Facebook love triangle.

Microsoft was always the most likely winner since they already had a partnership with Facebook. As TechCrunch put it, it is the path of least resistance. Also, we should note that this was never about the money: it's a political win and a winning of mindshare. Also, whoever won would officially become the most spying, prying, ad agency on the web - in the world! Google's stated goal is to target advertising based on search history and other personal data. They call it 'personalization'. Everyone kicked up a fuss about how naughty this is, so much so, that when Google wanted to buy DoubleClick, the cries became louder: Google has too much creepy oversight over us.

Still, whatever info Google had, it's nothing compared to what Facebook has - in relation, Google's knowledge of me is harmless compared to what I have in my FB profile. Imagine an ad agency: would you like to target 25-30 year old males in a relationship with a woman and having liberal political and religious views? Facebook will say "Sure! We got some of those!" Google has nothing to say about that.

The level of targeting can be ridiculous: wanna target people who may have missed someone's birthday? How about those who were recently in a relationship but are not anymore? What about those who just entered a relationship? How about accurate geotargeting? All this info and much more is readily available through Facebook, and now Microsoft has access.

So all in all, it's an exciting and eventful day, but looking at the potential privacy worries, it doesn't bode well for the future. Whatever happens, today is very likely to go down in history as a turning point for both Google and Microsoft.

While I'm rambling, I'll finish with some predictions:

• Facebook is already the home page for many people. They will add web search from Microsoft. Ooops.
• Google will fight back with some serious innovation in AdWords. This will be good for the advertisers but not so good for users.
• Google will win the EU antitrust hearts and be cleared to buy DoubleClick. All they need to do is point at the MS-FB deal.
• MS now has Digg and Facebook. Who's next? Federated Media (the ad agency) comes to mind.

All thoughts welcome below