Sgt_Kickaxe - 8:57 pm on Jun 18, 2010 (gmt 0)

I wasn't referring to the myth, Google hasn't told us how much affiliate salt we can sprinkle before killing the taste of our sites so how much of a myth it is is undertermined. I was focusing on the history and how it might be repeated.

I'm hoping I don't see Google's own ecommerce links show up on page one of serps with this new patent penalizing others by cherry picking key terms. Page one offers + naturally ranked offer pages using a tool that this patent would help create = not much help to existing ecommerce sites. When Google begins competing instead of being helpful it is no longer neutral, that's my concern.

If Google wants to fight Amazon, fine, as long as they don't feature Google offers on page one unless they are naturally ranked. I was going to wait and see how neutral Google remained with their core search product and their history makes me uneasy about that.

This new patent could conceivably use search to help Google gain an unfair advantage in rankings WHILE competing, that's not trivial imo.

Time will tell how far Google leverages search for their ecommerce business, I'm just sharing my concerns and wondering if they are shared.