ownerrim - 11:22 pm on Mar 1, 2005 (gmt 0)

"I'd say the hope now is that they all crackdown on who can be a publisher. "

Although, if adsense starts losing publisher pages, the pressure will be on them to KEEP publishers, not shake them off.

This could complicate any effort google might concievably engage in re: the weeding out of scrapers.

If/when Yahoo enters the fray, the dynamics for google may change severely. But...its hard to imagine that they haven't been anticipating and planning for this over at the plex.

Google has two concerns as regards this issue.

1. retaining as much of the search user market as possible.

2. attracting and retaining as many publishers as possible.

Of course, short term gambits aren't necessarily the same as long term strategies. Makes you wonder if yahoo will, in the short term, offer very good payouts, hoping that this will spur a feeding frenzy that results in publishers jumping ship. Google, anticipating this, might sweeten payouts as well to keep publishers from jumping ship. Who knows.