Napoleon - 12:33 pm on Jul 17, 2001 (gmt 0)

The two central issues are:

a) Relevancy.
This is surely what Joe public wants from his search. PPC is NOT the best way to get this - FAR from it. PPC is simple: deepest pocket wins.

Relevancy, however, is one of the core necessities of ensuring the character of the net does not change to become the same as that of other media. It is the reason why so many, including myself, are so strongly opposed to the march of GoTo.

b) Honesty
Displaying PPC results and disguising this fact is deceipt, and Gary Ruskin is absolutely right to make an issue of this.

Dishonest SEs disguise this source because they know that point (a) holds true... Joe Public wants relevancy, and if he knows the results are simply the result of an auction he will in general go and search elsewhere.

There will always be apologists for PPC, or those too short sighted to understand what this underlying issues are, but the above facts remain the same.