Do any of you remember Altavista back in the late 90's?
Man, Altavista was as big as Google right into the year 2000.

They were number 1, but they lost.
How did they lose? Simple: The spammers got the best of Altavista.
And who owns Altavista now?
(side-note: it is of interest to note that since altavista isn't being spammed as much now, their results are pretty clean).

How about Inktomi?
Inktomi was an independent company (or so it seems) providing search solutions... Wicked is all I can think, Inktomi was known as the grandfather of Internet, in some ways almost mythical. They even used to be Yahoo's service provider, I checked it out once to see how much it cost for their services: 10 thousand dollars/ year for the basics.
And who owns Inktomi today?

Lets not forget Overture:
At one time, the top ppc engine known as goto.com was so strong, it could drain a small bank account in under an hour, and that was back when their minimum bid was 1 cent/click, back in the days before the boom went bust.
We all know who owns this bit today.

I haven't been a real keen observer until around 2000, but from what appearances I have seen, the cycle repeats itself over and over:

- An engine becomes number one, and it manages to stay there for some time.
- In this time, spammers learn how to manhandle the database, which taints the results (see dmoz, lol).
- Over time, visitors grow tired of the tainting and once it gets so far out of hand, they move on.
- Then comes the next engine.

I am close to 100 percent sure that in 3-4 years we will see another dot boom.
Google has a chance to go down in history, maybe Yahoo buys it afterwards, who knows?
Then, some more guys come along, another enterprise.
The cycle repeats itself over and over.

Is google doomed? I am willing to stand corrected, and certainly it will take more than a few weeks from today, but from my past experiences, most evidence points this way.

The only question I have is, who is behind all this, is it really all as unrelated as it should be, or is it the same group of people simply having learned how to ride the waves of the cycle.