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Originally Posted by poe
How can a company that depends on ad-based revenue have too big of an audience?
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Ah, there's the rub. I didn't say they were getting too big, I said the name is getting too mainstream. There's a difference.
Sometimes part of the marketing department's job with certain brands is to keep it's edgy, underground-ish vibe while allowing it the room to grow into the larger company.
The hardcore non nonsense superior search algorithem is what draws it's core crowd of users to it. It's losing that aura with every new deal it does.
It will be easy for a new company to come along and offer a better search experience and attract that base of users.
MSN, Yahoo, AOL and the like are grandfathered in. They don't have certain standards to uphold unlike Google. They can and probably will take Google's lead in the ad/revenue model at some point in the next few years.
Google is still a relatively new company to a lot of non techy surfers so there's no loyalty there. If Google isn't careful and they lost their early adopter base they will have no shoulders to stand on.
According to some insiders, the fight for commerce over quality is raging inside of the company. Anything can happen at this point.