walkman - 10:57 pm on Sep 21, 2011 (gmt 0)

Why do people think the situation will improve if google is split up? There will still, presumably, be financial connections either between the companies or the people "in charge"? In which case, google properties will presumably still prevail?

They will not split them. All other properties will fail miserably if not promoted by Google search.

Google needs to open it's algo for inspection by court appointed specialists. Only brainwashed people believe the "trust us, we're different." As the Google founders said ad support, as a model, can make search biased and provide an incentive to have somewhat poor results (so people click on ads). Let's see if Google took $$ in consideration during the algo changes, especially during Panda that gave them record earnings on Google.com.