He called for restrictions on the company and warned Schmidt the company could “win yourself to death”

That is so disturbing.

Google depends on free content. If they kill the companies and businesses that produce that free content, what have they got left?

Regards...jmcc

Google depends on free content.

That used to be true, not so much anymore.

what have they got left?

56,000+ of the smartest minds in the world, 125+ Billion dollars, and apparently 90+ percent of the UK market who are slowly being trained to go to google for the answer instead of the 10 blue links.

google has already been going in this direction, looks like the UK is just going to speed it up a bit, at the expense of the citizens who choose to use google.

Here's the future of google:

No more organic search results. Why bother, they're nothing but a headache, the spam (where's Matt, maybe he realized he won't be needed any more because without organic results there's no need to fight spam), the regulation (nothing to regulate if there are no more organic results), the algo (this really falls into the spam category, that's all they've been doing for the last 3 years is fighting spam, nothing really new on making a better algo).

What ever will they do without any organic results?
adwords.
knowledge graph.
shopping.
google's own properties (growing in to new verticals every day).
and maybe even a small curated set of partner websites that provide information, maybe google even gets the searcher to pay for that (contributor?).

I've seen the "no more organic results" scenario posted a couple of times in the last few weeks.

But if Google becomes Overture (nee GoTo), then - unless you think searching the web is something most internet users no longer have any interest in - that would leave a huge vacuum for Bing, DuckDuckGo, Yandex and Baidu to leap into - and I really don't think Google would hand over that prize so readily.

I am constantly looking to learn how to do new things or fix problems in PHP or Javascript or HTML5 or CSS3. This isn't one of Wikipedia's strengths and (consequently) Google's knowledge vault can't hope to assist me nearly as well as StackOverflow or W3Schools or SitePoint or any number of lesser known forums.

If I can search all of those sites simultaneously in one place, that's the quickest and most efficient solution.

As long as non-commercial searches are an asset worth having (and I'm working on the basis they are), Google's Organic Search Results aren't going anywhere.

What could happen is the fragmentation of search into vortical type search engines.

Regards...jmcc

What ever will they do without any organic results?

They'll be recognised for what they are - an advertising agency masquerading as a search engine. Perhaps then someone else will step in and we can have real, unbiased search again.

Mind you they aren't the only culprit.

If I can search all of those sites simultaneously in one place, that's the quickest and most efficient solution.

I took a quick detour to Google's Custom Search setup (the one everyone puts on their site if they're not big enough to roll their own). It kinda looks as if you can include sites in your custom search even if they don't actually belong to you. So you can make up a search package, call it Top Ten Useful Sources, park it somewhere online, and use it at will.

Google's Custom Search setup

That's good to know, lucy24 - thanks!

Google's knowledge vault can't hope to assist me nearly as well as StackOverflow or W3Schools or SitePoint

Oops. I hope everyone here will forgive me for omitting from that short list WebmasterWorld which I am indebted to - and without whose community I never would have learned CSS2 back in 2003, never mind heaps of .js, .htaccess, PCRE & PHP ever since.

How embarrassing.

Any time over that last few years when Eric Schmidt has spoken you can hear his disdain for the organic search results.

A recent quote from Schimdt:

Google “Berlin weather” and you’ll no longer get ten blue links that you need to dig through. Instead, you’ll get the weather forecast for the next few days at the top result, saving you time and effort. Or Google “bratwurst” … and at the top will be images, nutrition facts, and a web page with a recipe.

Like it or not this is the direction they are going. They don't believe that a lack of organic results will leave a void, I tend to agree. Searchers want answers. google has the brain power and the money to give those answers without the ten blue links.

except that "Berlin weather" and other info is, in the main, scraped from other sites, especially sites that receive Google funding in some form or other ....

I rest my case.

<edit>spelling agiain !</edit>

scraped from other sites

The weather information displayed on google is not "scraped", it's the result of a partnership.

This is how google is going to be able to easily continue to provide the answers to information searches, through partnerships with informational sites. Just take a look at their test of Contributor by google.
urban dictionary
mashable
wikihow
science daily

They'll have no problem finding partners to work with to provide answers to informational searches.

And transactional searches, well those have already taken care of themselves.