rfgdxm1 - 7:51 pm on Oct 5, 2004 (gmt 0)

>Clusty doesn't look anything that much to me. I don't think G or any megabrand should be complacent. Fame is certainly fickle. Anyone remember Borroughs, the pioneers of automation? Success for sites dependent on SE click-through is always their own content-value. One and one usually end up as two.

Google shouldn't be complacent. However, they shouldn't leap into making major changes unless they have good data that the users will prefer the new, improved Google. Note Google got rid of the links in the SERPs to the Google directory. Given the poor quality of search terms many people use, I'd have thought these directory links were useful. With them, so long as one relevant site showed up in the SERPs, people could click on the link and find other relevant sites. Google must have done market research that showed people didn't want the directory links. Note that ask.com already has those "related links" similar to Clusty. I hadn't heard that people are flocking to ask.com away from Google in large numbers. People seem to like Google as it currently is: nice and simple.