londrum - 9:29 pm on Jan 21, 2012 (gmt 0)

but if you look at all the things they've been pushing recently -- page speed, big brands, ad placement etc, its all blonde hair kind-of stuff. that want to push all the well-known and pretty pages to the top. the kind of pages that users are comfortable with.

i think they are trying to become the "comfortable jumper" of search engines. they might not push forward the best results from the farthest reaches of the web anymore (not when every search returns wikipedia amazon youtube blah blah), but what they do serve up will likely do the job