caveman - 8:18 pm on Jan 9, 2006 (gmt 0)

IMHO, Nielsen calls attention to a fundamental truth of search marketing, though I agree that the piece was a bit all over the place. Who cares; he's helping to advance an important dialogue.

I personally believe that the issue is not just pricing levels per se, but:
1) the share of market that two SE's have of total search (with search having become the default gateway to much of the Web),
2) how that puts these two companies in a position to effectively control search pricing, and,
3) how cloaked their pricing mechanisms are.

If I am a marketer wanting to advertise in print, or on radio, or on TV, my biggest problem is: too many options, i.e., fragmentation. Not so in search marketing. Search marketing is a relatively unique marketplace as media goes ... in effect, a duopoly ... and G recently took a big step to help keep it that way.

Yahoo! is not a search company; it is an entertainment company. Google is not a search company; it is an advertising behemoth. For both of these companies, search is now merely a means to an end.

Brilliant though they may be, leading SE's are still essentially doing little more than scraping site info with their bots, organizing it, ordering it, and slaping advertising on the results. (TV Guide on steoroids.)

Will just a few SE's be able to maintain near total control of the search marketplace? ;-)