Sgt_Kickaxe - 7:52 am on May 25, 2010 (gmt 0)

Heads up people, this is where Google starts to become the destination and not just the search engine.

That's true, and acceptable, until they give preferential treatment to themselves in their own search engine pages. A sidebar full of Google sites on Google results pages is unfair to sites that can't possibly get onto that sidebar. If keeping search results pages clean and unbiased is important to Google they'll not link to their own sites from search results bars.

Bing is worse on this, by a lot actually.

As for Ruba, it looks like the flickr of travel review sites where a mix of photography makes it a winner. It looks hard to monetize however BUT those user reviews themselves are top notch content. It's not easy getting people to WANT to take the time to provide quality reviews and pictures for free and Ruba seems to have gotten them to do that which is why Google is interested.