i agree that liability is there biggest future concern. they had no choice but to go public. they had too many stock holders with too much money to remain private anymore.
Lots of big IFs here... If this actually goes to trial, and If there even a chance Google will lose, there will be a settlement. No company can afford to risk their whole business model on a jury or a judge's decision. If it gets to that point, Overture would be looking to settle to for the same reason. They would be more willing to take guaranteed money than risk getting absolutely nothing.
true, cherokee. but lets face it: google is up for a whole lot of lawsuits as a public company. they will be sitting on a huge wad of dough and lawyers will want a piece of that.
I dont think its going to affect googles prominance as a search engine though.
i think their search is getting worse all the time.
True, Any engine that manages to deliver relevant search results will stand a chance at taking a chunk of googles traffic.