Inflation of useful space usage in Google search results
Yesterday John Gruber at Daring Fireball pointed to davidmihm.com/blog/google/world, where David shows that the typical search results page at Google is predominantly using space for Google itself and only a tiny bit to show actual results. On the one hand, it's understandable, it's their duty to make money, and they got greedy, and we have little choice, so they force us to look at their ads. And make no mistake, google own navigation and buttons and links are all ads, ads of themselves. On the other hand, they want you to stay in their not-so-little world. And we know that too much advertising does not work well. They know it because it was part of their "don't be evil" strategy years ago, not anymore. Showing more ads is not nearly as evil as allowing paid inclusions, and they do that now too. These are just steps on their walk from people's "not evil" darling to yet another giant evil greedy corporate monster. They know it, but they want the money more than sticking to their moral principles.
One day many years ago, I got lucky with Google. I opened a browser, searched for "elegant and stylish webdesign," and my site was at the top, so I saved the page. So take a look at the difference.
