Whilst I completely understand their aims of making people find the things they are looking for as effectively as possible, even if its paid for, it concerns me that this is slowly being degraded by a mission to own EVERYTHING digital, including sales.

Even the role of a PPC campaign manager will one day be obsolete!

Microsoft is beginning to look like a saint compared to this gruesome machine!

Or maybe that’s all wishful thinking!

Example….Google banks big time off of affiliates for years. Some guys spend a few 100k per day (or spent). Suddenly they have to compete directly with Google.

Google promoted Firefox against IE for browser. Suddenly Firefox has to compete with chrome.

Google offers Android as an alternative phone OS. Phone makers now have to compete with the upcoming Google phone.

I could go on but, to me, the pattern is already pretty obvious. Google gets way more latitude on this than MS got because they are smarter about how they work things…I believe dangerously so. Almost looks as if we’ve built a monster.

Yea, the writing is definitely on the wall. It’s difficult to move from the facilitator to the provider though in certain areas.

I remember when AdSense had the CPA thing. It was a pain in the arse. I have not used AdSense in about 3 years now so I didn’t know it was gone.

You make a good point, I have seen some internal AdWords “specialists” do some really damaging things to clients accounts. Every account/business is different. We’ll see how they get on.

Dumping affiliates and losing some babies in the bathwater is something they were willing and able to do.

The Google monopoly is in full force, milking everything even the bull!!!

If Google wants to play the affiliate game and try to monopolize it, it will see reduced PPC revenues from AdWords affiliate marketers. The first shoe fell when it discouraged affiliate links in landing pages of PPC campaigns. That must have hit them in the pocketbook, but they must have done a cost-benefit analysis and decided that it was worth the lost AdWords revenue to try this venture. At this point, they can afford to experiment like this. Let’s see how this pans out.

I have not been here for a while it seems as it is the first time I have seen the new design – it looks great.

Even though most of my sites make their money from ads, I think the best way to be using the web just now is to sell own products and I have been looking for tie ups in that area.

G were always heading in this direction, they tried it a year or so back inside adsense and that didn’t work for too long. It will be interesting to see how this goes.

I don’t believe Google have the man power to completely domiate – I have seen too many adwords accounts set up by their internal experts that were not very good.

As usual I think our space is alway interesting, with MS wooing news to them only, (great for me I think, getrid of all those strong sites), and Google playing with MS with its apps. The thing to remember is that both of them need content and publishers, if publishers stop making money what happens then – time will tell as usual.

They’re also allowing publishers to use their network so they can pick up the crumbs. Oh, and because it’s Google’s network, they also get a cut of the crumbs.

Your post is spot on. But it also goes to show that if you’re not satisfied with the volume of free/organic traffic, then you MUST start learning how to play efficiently in the paid game.

Good point about Bing too. I think (but am probably wrong as Google have obviously tested this) that many users are uncomfortable with the complicated nature of some of Google’s latest SERPs. Bing has kept things simple, something Google was very good at. I’m sure a lot of folks who are used to, and simply prefer a list of ten simple links will begin to use Bing a little more.

Finally, your right, optimizing traffic for conversions should now be a priority for most webmasters as the results of the effort are “source independent” (to a large extent). Where as specific SEO tactics are not. In a lot of cases, they work with one SE and not another.

Well, Google Base IS Google merchant center now. It’s never included AdWords integration before as it was always free.

Your post is an excellent one showing the whole “You’re either with us, or against us” ideal Google is pushing.

“If your lucky enough to be in the competitors position, you better believe you have to pay to be alongside them”. Fair enough I suppose.

Aaron’s post is an interesting one too. Shows how Google is really getting it’s moneys worth in competitive areas.

As to Google in the organic listings… they are pushing those too. Notice that Google Base and Books show up with increasing frequency?