enigma1 - 12:13 pm on Dec 3, 2011 (gmt 0)

This relates to the thread "Ecommerece where it is going"

I am not sure if it will go that direction and for how long. You see there are many other factors - lots of these articles don't even mention - who have great potential and can shift the balance of what you see today. This is not about other search engines or online social networks.

For example, have you considered what's going on with the browsers? They are the medium to connect to a search engine. They can transparently pull very accurate search results from anywhere, without surrounding ads and without using the same SE. So if users see more benefits using a browser rather than accessing the search engine page directly it can change all this.