fathom - 7:40 am on Oct 5, 2002 (gmt 0)

Change is change.

I notice Overture (aka GoTo) and Yahoo are still going strong and no one would ever paid to get listed a few years ago either.

Real Player same thing - it was/is free but they make a healthy profit at about 100 million per year.

I think the determining factors are quality and marketing -- if Google's quality of results becomes far superior than anything else under the sun and they market it right (someday) people will pay.

A decade into the search engine game isn't that much history -- in 1903, man took flight but the Wright Brothers didn't really envision commercial air travel as a big money maker and it was close to 50 years before a true market was apparent.

Good products and services die every day while at the same time "crap" flourishes.

If you market right... anything is possible.