kaled - 10:59 am on Apr 1, 2004 (gmt 0)

I've only skimmed this thread so apologies if I'm not saying anything new.

DMOZ/ODP editors are unpaid. It is assummed that ALL organisations may utilise its data freely commercial or otherwise.

Whilst one company may own the hardware, logos, domain name, etc, they do not own the contents. Banning Google from use of ODP data would certainly be immoral, it might even be illegal.

Also, my understanding of Page Rank logic may be limited, but I very much doubt that the starting point is critical beyond the first few iterations. If Google dropped ODP data, the only sites to suffer would be those that have few other backlinks. The whole PR calculation NOT fall apart.

Kaled.