people are going to google to find something, only to be served google's own content. the websites in the serps are being shut out because they don't make google any money.

That hasn't been my experience.

Also, it's important not to get sucked into the black holes of FUD that occur whenever Google announces a new product. Remember the panic attacks on these forums when Google announced Knol? People were crying that Knol would kill Wikipedia and mom-and-pop information sites. Has that happened? Nope.

If you've got a site that's driven by automation, and if Google can do that automation as well as you can or better, then Google is a threat to your business. Most of us don't fit into that category, however. For us, Google Search has been (and likely will continue to be) a blessing, not a curse.

I think it is wrong only to look at the sheer size China's population and their Internet use. If money talks, we need to look at income per capita (person): On the average an American earns $46,000+ per year and a Chinese earns $3,200 (estimated for 2008 - Sources: World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and CIA Factbook). How much do you think a Chinese consumer can spend for your products or services? They have the products and services to sell to you. And, that's why millions of Chinese are trying to learn English (and also see what's going on in the real world ... as much as their government allows (:<).

While they have full copyright/patent protection for their products and services as they sell their products and services primarily with the help of American and European companies,you have have not such protection for your goods and services in China.

The markets in the U.S. and other English-, French-, German-, Spanish-speaking countries are rich enough for the time-being. Nobody knows well what will happen in 5-10 years down the road as language translation technology may enable us to communicate in multiple languages real-time.

Most of Eric Schmidt's 45-minute talk was about enterprise and cloud. Cloud is the main target where G will be trying to get the largest market share. Probably, what happened in search market shares will repeat itself in cloud computing area if G's competitors cannot act proactively.

Noone knows and to be honest I don't think Eric knows tooeither. 8 years ago, Google was nothing, I'm sure if you asked the CEO of Yahoo back in 2000, they probably say Yahoo will take over the world.

We all know the world is going to end in 2012 anyway so I don't see what all the fuss is about.

However, in the interim, the Chinese web will be aided by the new non-Latin domains.

Other than that - the observation about social networks being akin to reality TV - I like that analogy. Its cheap to make, full of self-promoters and incredibly popular. With real time Googling you could be famous for 15 searches.

In the beginning the Computer was a Big Machine.

The Terminal begged permission to access the Big Machine.

Over time the Terminal Users grew dissatisfied with "System Busy." and asked the TechnoGeEks for Help.

The PC was created. The Users wept with Joy and became Individuals.

Yet, the Individual Users missed the Community of Users, while reviling the Administrator of the Big Machine, so Connectivity was created and all was good. But the Administrator of the Big Machine was Sad and wanted the Users to return because Control was gone, and Control was sorely missed.

The Users, as Users are wont, realized their powerful PC's were slightly deficient and craved more.

"Let there be Cloud" said Administrators of collected PCs. "There will be a return to the Big Machine!"

And there we are, going backwards to single points of data distribution controlled by corporations. Just a point of view.