MrSavage - 7:13 pm on Oct 11, 2012 (gmt 0)

To the OP, people don't notice much these days. Privacy today compared to 10 years ago? It's no comparison. People are numb and it doesn't get better. It only matters when something or someone affects enough people in a bad way. Then people take notice. Aside from that it's a collective shoulder shrug.

It's also going to come down to what Bing etc are doing. If they do, then they can do it also. It's always easy to say that we're just doing what they are doing, so why are you taking issue with us? That's an easy argument to make.

I'm a bit perplexed when I see movie show times and sports scores with expandable sections right on google to include more listings or scores. That's not even an issue it seems, but I personally didn't leave google's page and didn't have to got to espn, the movie theatre site, etc. That's my personal example. So obviously the theatre or espn get sooooo much organic traffic that they don't give a S about losing a couple visitors in this way. So you could say Google can easily appease any bitching that might come there way. You lose this, but your brand is gaining here. Would I bitch about it if I brought in 1 million uniques a day from Google organic traffic and then they decided to use some of my content on their homepage which cost me 5,000 uniques? Not a chance. It's the corporate way. What's good for me is good for you.

Site wise it's just a matter of choosing wisely now and putting the torch to ideas or content that at one point you thought was a good idea. Good ideas for survival in the quest for organic traffic are dwindling. At least for me anyways.

Regarding Google without writers? All they need is a few agreements and they are fine. The only ones recently who really bitched were the newspapers. Even they can easily be appeased with a throwback of some sort. Google has tablets so I'm sure there will be a "pat my back and I'll pat your back" situation with newspapers.