Yeah, I hear ya. Nothing much surprises me anymore in this world. Being the big business that this sector is, everyone wants their hand in the cookie jar, so to speak. I guess we can hope, and we can attempt to move forward.
I will say that I had noticed some scraping going on with some of my content on another site where I sell some things. (not gaming related) I reported a bunch of scraped URLs and it appears that most of them are gone. But that sector isn’t even in the same ballpark as online gaming is. Anything is possible. A close friend of mine used to tell me – if it is possible, then at some point it will happen, or it is likely already happening.
I used to dig Google and think that they were different, etc. They used to be, but now they’ve become what they were trying not to be. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. I wonder if some new engines will come to compete with Google? They need some fresh competition. It certainly sucks to be at their mercy. I was reading an article about Google in the latest Fortune magazine. They can pretty much make or break any small business. Whenever they release a new piece of experimental software, they cut out a lot of little guys. The song remains the same…
This is speculation on my part (certainly not fact), but everyone has a price, and insider info happens all the time. I used to work for a $ 5Billion+ corporation, and be on the inside, and it was amazing the things I saw and knew…..and I wasn’t the CEO.
This Moscow-based ring is powerful and has many assets at its disposal, as is indicated in the link on them in a prior post. I really believe there have been compromises made inside Google, to lend itself to these cheats. Payoffs are certainly within the realm of possibility, and probably very likely. Like I said, everyone has a price, and one person’s leak, could break the whole secretive algorithm.