It also has citation tracking, alerts and journal metrics. Admittedly tracking citations is somewhat like tracking links for pagerank, but it must take a bit of

It also has citation tracking, alerts and journal metrics. Admittedly tracking citations is somewhat like tracking links for pagerank, but it must take a bit of effort - it's not just a regular search constrained to journal databases. As a regular user of Google Scholar, I hope you're right about the recruitment & morale purposes. But I've heard several people making a similar argument against killing Reader - it serves a demographic that Google might especially want to keep on side. That didn't appear to stop them.