Are you sure you're not eating your own seed corn?
If Google eats all those sites and services up, what stops them from doing all sorts of nasty stuff once they're in the dominant position later on?
How are the little guys supposed to compete with premium-space on Google's search pages? Nothing on this planet is a stronger marketing engine than that.
> If Google eats all those sites and services up, what stops them from doing all sorts of nasty stuff once they're in the dominant position later on?
And if I had wings, I could save me the airline fares. There is zero indication of Google actually being a Bondesque supervillain organization out to destroy the world.
> How are the little guys supposed to compete with premium-space on Google's search pages? Nothing on this planet is a stronger marketing engine than that.
Back in 1997, I used Altavista for search, sometimes Metacrawler, very rarely Yahoo. I got a hint from a friend about this new thing called Google - back then, they were the underdog. They surprised me with their vastly better search results. I never looked back to the "stronger marketing engines" that was Yahoo. Or Metacrawler. Or Altavista.
In truth, marketing engines mean shit if your product is bad. Google today is the company that gives people what they want, at a reasonable quality. If you are a little guy, you can compete if you are better than Google.
If Google eats all those sites and services up, what stops them from doing all sorts of nasty stuff once they're in the dominant position later on?
How are the little guys supposed to compete with premium-space on Google's search pages? Nothing on this planet is a stronger marketing engine than that.