Last Friday, the Motley Fool had an interesting article that's getting some discussion about how Google is killing the internet. The argument is basically that Google killed its own golden goose of Adwords, with its introduction of Adsense contextual advertising for other sites. Once that began, so began a huge (and ever growing) industry of creating totally bogus sites whose only purpose is to run Adsense ads and collect money. Because of this, the author feels, the internet has become so cluttered with crap, that basic things like search are no longer particularly useful. That's a bit extreme, and while the article claims Google's overwhelming position atop the search leader boards makes it impossible to "self-correct" that seems unlikely. If advertisers feel they're getting bogus clicks, they're going to start to opt-out of buying ads on content sites. The real issue is that there still hasn't been a great competitor to Adsense. However, that may be changing.

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