oddsod - 9:22 am on Jul 24, 2007 (gmt 0)

I'm with EFV.

... it's well beyond presumptuous to assert that the business search game is over, that Google has won, and that other forms - such as directories - are no longer a valid model. Any such asserttion, even one that comes close to it is . is . hmm, how can I say this politely... (is) not entirely right. ;-P

How can I say this politely ;)... but business leads aren't the only result of people's searches. That DMOZ is not a valid model anymore is not the same thing as the SEs being the only game in town. This isn't 1999 and there are a million new ways people reach destinations. In the previous decade people may have used DMOZ a lot to find destinations. That just doesn't happen anymore.

I have a site that has over 300 DMOZ listings. The traffic DMOZ generates for me in a year is less than what my smallest contributing SE (Yahoo) provides in a day. OK, I'm not going to request that DMOZ remove my listings because they may be playing some small, indirect role in my SE rankings but, let's not delude ourselves: DMOZ isn't the first place you go when you need to search for something. For many people it isn't even the last.

The question isn't why there isn't an alternative - it's rather why would anyone be stupid enough to even consider cloning a dodo. (No personal offence to the numerous DMOZ eds here many of whom I have great respect for)