"If some people have more votes than others, then surely this undermines democratic fabric on which Google is said to be based."

Another crack in Google's claim to be democratic is fact that some votes are worth more than others. The higher a site ranks on Google, higher value of its votes. This seems reasonable, a high ranking site must have useful content, (to have been linked to by other sites, although this page may, indeed, have purchased these links!) therefore it is likely to link to another site with valuable content. However, it is not fairness of Google's system that this article is questioning, it is its claim to be democratic. Weighted voting cannot exist in a truly democratic system.

Overall, Google's system is indeed 'uniquely democratic', in sense that is unique compared to any democratic system I know of. With; multiple voting, some votes being worth more than others, buying votes and more, it is extremely doubtful that Google is indeed democracy of Internet.

If we think search engine traffic from Google is really an incentive to try it free before you buy. This time, Google decides to lure major corporations to test benefits of search traffic. Major corporations will likely increase their spending in online advertising and those news agencies may even drop their law sues against Google if they see traffic from Google justifies that their sites benefit from including in Google index database.

Is this real driving force behind last update? Only Google knows. If you own Google, however, you will do exactly same.

Will this negatively impact user experience? - maybe and maybe not. What is real difference between #1 spot and site that ranks #100? - backlinks. Backlinks don't alter quality of a page at all.

When they say technology, they mean business. Major technology changes are always driven by business needs. It has nothing to do with "good" or "bad".

Strategies to Cope with search Engine Updates

The Internet and Web was once hailed as new medium and new opportunity for small business and site owners. They will be disappointed as big three peek into fortune 500 companies's deep packets. There're strategies they can use to cope with search engine updates, however.

1. Create a portfolio of website using different SEO techniques. If some of your sites get hammered in a update rest may benefit from update. 2. Generate traffic from all major search engines. 3. Use search traffic to build loyal user bases. 4. Build sites similar to sites of well-established companies. The tags, on-page, off page optimization techniques will become less and less important as major corporations aren't interested in those types of things that geek webmasters are interested.