BeeDeeDubbleU - 9:14 pm on Aug 20, 2009 (gmt 0)

I wasn't paying attention when Google arrived on the scene, did it's arrival cause this much angst, spin, confusion, strife, strident debate, whatever, etc?

No it didn't because Google created Adwords/Adsense and hence more or less created the advertising monster that the WWW has become.

First we thought the PC was a calculator. Then we found out how to turn numbers into letters with ASCII — and we thought it was a typewriter. Then we discovered graphics, and we thought it was a television. With the World Wide Web, we’ve realized it’s a brochure. Douglas Adams (who wrote the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy).