Whitey - 4:07 am on Nov 17, 2007 (gmt 0)

I'd think that this acquistion was simply an accident resulting from the main game of buying DoubleClick.

Even thogh there's a perceived conflict of interest, I'd expect Chinese Walls to be in place ie no access to "secret soup" recipes in the Google algo or favouritism. Not even Google employees close to search quality probably know the inner workings accurately of Google's algo.

But that's just me with a huge assumption [ which could be wrong ] :)