tedster - 2:35 pm on Jun 3, 2010 (gmt 0)

What we need is a healthy 2 or 3 or 4 search engines each with a reasonable share

I agree with that. It is not the responsibility of any search engine, including Google, to let webmasters know which factors might be changing. In fact, that would be suicidal. And Google is not numb to their potentially negative affect on other businesses. They do communicate with webmasters a good bit.

Do they "spin" that communication? Sure, just like any company would. But they still invest a good bit of their resources into webmaster communication and education.

Pandia published a good piece on this Google is not Cute Anyomre [pandia.com], riffing on the Markham Erickson quote [nytimes.com] "Once you're big, you're not cute any more."

[edited by: tedster at 8:23 pm (utc) on Jun 6, 2010]