zett - 8:06 pm on Feb 4, 2009 (gmt 0)

I agree that this is probably huge.

Google is known to give out as little information as possible. And they deliberately choose which information they give out.

So it is rather unrealistic to think that they will give out that information to webmasters once they have the ability to control that information.

If you want to get a glimpse into the future - just have a look at Adsense reports. There is hardly any valuable information in there, and critics are usually told to simply shut off: "You want Google's money, so accept the deal. You don't have a right to get that information. Accept the system 'as is', or do not use Google for monetization." - Now, with the AJAX referrers, it's easy to see how this may be translated to Google search: "You want Google's traffic, so accept the deal. You don't have a right to get that information. Accept the system 'as is', or do not use Google for getting traffic."

I see only one chance to stop Google: webmasters need to block the Google bot and actively promote other search engines. I know how hard this may be. It's certainly easier said than done. Even for our tiny group of sites. But it needs to be done. TBH, I don't even want to start thinking about a time where Google IS the Internet.