JeevesGuy - 7:44 pm on Jun 21, 2004 (gmt 0)

Brett and co.,

Regarding Binoculars, this feature is meant to save searchers from expending fruitless bandwidth, which should save end sites from doing the same. Before Binoculars, a user only had title and description to go by in determining pre-click relevance. Binoculars will not completely replace the need to click to determine the ultimate relevance of a page (in most cases), but will simply give people more information, to make a better decision before clicking through, enhancing post-click value for everyone.

Also, as some in WebmasterWorld have noticed recently, in the U.S. we are in the process of removing the "AnswerFrame", as it's historically been called here. The complication is that the frame contains a search box, and many people find this box location very useful, saving them a click back to our site. In terms of "selfish motives" with the Frame, we run no ads on this frame and mere page views (for the sake of it) are of little to no value to our business. On the other hand, from an overall experience perspective, more people would prefer this tool to be set to default "off" rather than "on" in their user preferences, so we are moving to that model. In between we're trying to keep it live for people who have used it in the past and presumably find it useful.

Thanks,
-JeevesGuy