I was distorting nothing, I just said people that don't like Google can easily opt-out.

This is an infantile argument. People, including myself are perfectly able to criticize Google without blocking them from robots.txt.

It's kind of like people that don't work and live on welfare (AdSense is webmaster welfare) complaining about the government.

Personally, I've never really had cause to complain about Adsense. It's made it possible for me to give up the old 9-5 in a a cubicle. I'm a lot poorer - but also a lot happier - so go Google!

search isn't going anywhere, neither is Google, neither is Google search... when the economy rebounds more people will be searching for that cool new gadget, looking up academic topics at schools, searching vacation destinations, looking up car specs etc. Regarding ads... people aren't buying right now... look for CPCs to come down a bit and as the economy heats up looks for CPCs to rise a bit, then watch the flurry of new ads...

More, More, MORE is the real problem. Investors will eventually be unhappy and god help us all(webmasters) when that happens, Google needs to be taken off Wall Street

I agree, the problem is google went public and now has to grow grow grow, that that just isn't realistic, goog can't keep growing forever it will eventually hit a cap and stop.

But you notice all of this happend when eric took the wheel.

Google wouldn't be google without the people that create the content, the web, the buzz, the news. It's basically a well marketed scraper site and all manner of media and sycophants provide "oohs and ahhs" and attribute all sorts of magical qualities to a search engine.

It's just a search engine, certainly a difficult feat to accomplish back when they stated it, but now, not so much. Google will be google until the next google comes along and then they'll go the way of altavista and the other also-reigned's.

I will side with incrediBILL. I don't know why a lot of webmasters became excited when Yahoo gave up its search to bing. They say now we will see some competition. But in reality, I just lost one of my baskets to put my eggs in.

Try this in your robots.txt file ...
User-agent: GoogleBot
Disallow: /

Everyone likes to claim Google is old news, everyone's jumping ship, etc. so I was just suggesting those that don't like Google cut off their relationship because taking free organic traffic from a company someone dislikes is being hypocritical.

I don't do business with companies I don't like, I don't give them money and I certainly wouldn't want their charity.

So, do I have to take down all my banners, signs and pennants every time someone I don't like is passing in front of my b&m shop?
It's just free advertising and whoever rejects it is just plain stupid. There are plenty of reasons for not liking Goog, yet "free" traffic is just one reason to like it. We'll all be paying for this "free" traffic, some are already paying for it. I wouldn't call it hypocritical, practical defines it better. If goog could dispense with your site, very probably would do it. However Goog still needs websites to feed its search engine, its main business.

It's just a search engine, certainly a difficult feat to accomplish back when they stated it, but now, not so much.

I would argue it is still an extremely difficult task to do search as well as Google does.

Google's technology can scale beyond what any other company can do right now. Even Microsoft with their hoards of billions of dollars has not caught up to Google's technology behind search.

Then add in their publisher network. Arguably the largest successful publisher network in existence. I would argue that even if the sky fell from beneath their feet and they lost all their search market share, they would still make a billion a year from their Adsense network.

Google's technology can scale beyond what any other company can do right now. Even Microsoft with their hoards of billions of dollars has not caught up to Google's technology behind search.

It's just a matter of time, When Ford started rolling out cars, no one could compete and The founder Henry Ford when asked about providing cars of different colors replied "you can have your car in any color as long as it is black". History repeats, hubris is the achilles heel of any operation like google or Ford (back in the day) it's just a matter of when, not if. Google is the most arrogant company on the web and while it enjoys audience and customers, I'm not so sure the customers enjoy doing business with them, they are more akin to global taxing authority (perceived as a necessary evil) than an advertising company. Others will exploit the void, fill the need for a more competitive way to please advertisers.

Google is losing its lustre and a lot of people have their eye on that prize.

off topic, but does anyone notice a link at the bottom of goog "Change Background Image"

more bing envy.

off topic, but does anyone notice a link at the bottom of goog "Change Background Image"

more bing envy.

One could argue that Microsoft saw iGoogle themes with backgrounds and decided to expand on that idea when they made Bing.

Guys, what would be your opinion for like working for non-Tech non-Internet companies goldman sucks, societe generale compared to Techs like google and cisco?

I may be sorry for offbeat entry but feeling interested to know the non-Internet non-Google world here, when someone is saying Google search party is over.

A very timely and appropriate article. This is the first time a major publication has talked about it. We have been talking about search peaking for about two years. So it is nice to see the mainstream play catchup.

I think Fortune missed a key issue that Google faces. Google has their hands in so many different pockets, that I think the biggest issue for them is going to be the lack of willing business partners. When Google first started, they had help from everyone like AOL, Yahoo, and Amazon. Now, those partnerships are few and far between because like Apple, no one can trust Google any more not to compete with them.

I think Fortune missed a key issue that Google faces. Google has their hands in so many different pockets, that I think the biggest issue for them is going to be the lack of willing business partners. When Google first started, they had help from everyone like AOL, Yahoo, and Amazon. Now, those partnerships are few and far between because like Apple, no one can trust Google any more not to compete with them.

That's an interesting viewpoint. Can you develop?

As Google feels the need to grow..and opportunites get limited, ethics and balanced business pratices will be the first casualty. We already see that happening.

Soon we will see adSense ads and adWords ads on SEARCH for erstwhile banned terms..viz..P0 Rn / Alcohol/ Guns etc as G realizes that this is a huge untapped market.

Ethics / values be damned in the money making age..Goota satisfy the shareholders. Rest is all umimportant.

Google builds cool products and let's the world use then for free. No one else does that as well as Google.

Couldn't be further from the truth, the personal data they gather and then hold ransom for profit in other ways is far from free. Most non webmasters don't have a clue how their personal data is being used by Google, or even that they've given any.

When Google first started, they had help from everyone like AOL, Yahoo, and Amazon. Now, those partnerships are few and far between because like Apple, no one can trust Google any more not to compete with them.

The tables have turned, for sure, I'm even seeing webmasters unafraid to hotlink images from Google or use Google directly in various ingenious ways to spam the internet. A lot of bridges, and respect, has been burned.

Turning off javascript disables adsense display.
A line of frame busting code hijacks your pages BACK from google images.
Using a Google alternative whenever possible helps ensure Google doesn't ever get to where Wall street is driving it.

Things to consider.

Google builds cool products and let's the world use then for free. No one else does that as well as Google.

oh really like what?
buzz?
wave?
orkut?

googs long list of things that suck is much longer then the hits.

Lets just be clear here, we ALL know why goog throws free services out there. TO HOOK YOU TO THEIR DATA COLLECTION MACHINE. their cool free apps are nothing but TRAPS, PERIOD. make no mistake about that.

I use buzz a lot, as do a fair number of others I know, maybe our community is small (made some friends through buzz), but we still find it useful - particularly as I won't touch facebook with a barge pole!