Or it could be a sign that google recognizes that a good portion of the market doesn't care about search quality. It's not 1999 anymore, the web's gone fully co

Or it could be a sign that google recognizes that a good portion of the market doesn't care about search quality. It's not 1999 anymore, the web's gone fully commercial, and users are as easily swayed by branding as they are by product quality. In my book, this was google refusing to lose customers to branding by meeting Microsoft move-for-move. Google's technical innovations are their technical response to MS.