walkman - 10:50 pm on Sep 15, 2011 (gmt 0)

My point is that it has happened. The examples I cite are from Bing's main menu, and I haven't seen nearly this degree of outrage about Bing's approach. IMO, the Travel results on Bing should have been the starting point for many of the complaints in this discussion. Do a search for the word [hawaii] in Bing and in Google, and tell me what you see.

I searched and all I see more ad for Hawaii on Bing. I have no idea why, but I sincerely doubt Google is holding back on ad placements. I see no travel info. You need to understand that having a 65%-95% search market is totally different from 15% or 2% (in some EU countries). One drives companies out of business, the other causes them a few % loss. If you don't believe me, just look what Google said about MS back in the day. You don't see people complaining about Blekko for example because they have a limited impact. But when Google copies their ideas, they are felt.

Google is extremely good, though, at organizing information.

Google is extremely good, though, at organizing even the most private information about people and monetizing it to death. Your dear company has stopped innovating, now it's a matter of defending what they got--by monopolist means--and monetizing it to death.

But Google's greatest 'asset' is that they now have no shame nor decency. They always pushed the limits, starting with 'reading' people's emails and probably storing profiles of their lives based on what the emails said. All for a $.