Martin_Ice_Web - 7:52 am on Oct 5, 2012 (gmt 0)

Just to add my two cents I see the same thing as maxmoritz sees. Many small business with unique content even if they are a manufacturer of a product get wiped out. I see "sorry we donīt have this item" ( many from amazon ) only because the have it in a sitemap submitted query in page 1.
When I look for infomation I get now blog entries from sources I would NEVER trust. The old forums that i trusted are now gone ( but on page 1 in bing ).
The discussion that google want to be a knowledge base shows the lack of interest in webmasters from google. Google does not create content it finds content. If many websites close down there is nothing to find. The few left big sites will realy fast see that google makes no money out of their knowledge.
To eleminate affiliates is - in my opinion - ok. But the biggest affiliats ( like amazon, price compare engines ) got strenght while self written content as been demoted.
Big brands can do what they want ( someone wrote in this threat ) an I see a big brand in germany that is always on site 1 that has the same content on its subdomain!

While I am with claaarky and his theory about user metrics i think the barrier is way to high to get over it for small business.