RandomDot - 4:09 pm on Sep 30, 2007 (gmt 0)

Again - it's not about how good or bad any of the above is - they DO provide something of value for some people at some point - no matter how they do it. That goes for google, answers, wikipedia, everybody - it's just different business models used on a large scale - it's the "big" examples - most of the smaller sites and such are also using these methods - sometimes variations over them and such - but it basically remains the same.

But to refer to the orginal post again - and give my opinion on why duplicated content and such shows up in Google: They earn money on it - and so does the people with the duplicated content. Google is nobodys friend - they're a business, not an ideological movement like they sometimes pretend to be - and they will pretend to give some other businesses (people with alot of resources) something of value (visitors) so they don't leave the scene. Google depend on it's own success and access to information and you don't want to have too many people being angry at you, and especially not in the marketing sector - you want them to depend on you - because if they do - they will try to protect you. You've just turned a potential enemy into another soldier in your army.

Again, don't ever make the mistake of thinking that the internet or a business is democratic - it's not - it's a mix of feudalism, oligarchy and meritocracy - which is put into a dynamic trio: Royalty/Aristocracy/Farmers - and everybody starts as a farmer..

Oh, and by the way - last night I blocked all robots from my website, and all referrals unless they were approved by me as "trusted sources" - don't need garbage visitors from serps - so somebody does it -

[edited by: RandomDot at 4:25 pm (utc) on Sep. 30, 2007]