This move makes almost no sense to me. The “open” argument doesn’t hold water, as other codecs are just as likely to be limited by patents as h.264. And there’s nothing open about Flash, which is built in to Chrome. It’s a tired old argument. And we’ve seen plenty of evidence that Google doesn’t really care about open, anyway. So that can’t be the reason. More importantly, all current Android phones have H.264 hardware decoding support built in. They don’t have…

> If you follow evolutionary theory, you know that one big question is why sexual reproduction evolved — and why it persists, given the substantial costs involved. Why doesn’t nature just engage in cloning? > > And the most persuasive answer, as I understand it, is [defense against parasites](http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090706171542.htm). via [krugman.blogs.nytimes.com](http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/10/google-needs-sex/?src=twt&twt=NytimesKrugman)His conclusion: Google needs sex. Meaning it needs to evolve like humankind did, rather than clone itself…

> Searching Google is now like asking a question in a crowded flea market of hungry, desperate, sleazy salesmen who all claim to have the answer to every question you ask. via [marco.org](http://www.marco.org/2617546197)Great quote from Marco Arment, who has now also joined in the “Google Search has become unusable” fray. The list is growing.…

> Despite the semi-positive resolution, I was disturbed. If these dime-store scrapers were doing so well and generating so much traffic on the back of our content – how was the rest of the web faring? My enduring faith in the gravitational constant of Google had been shaken. Shaken to the very core. > > Throughout my investigation I had nagging doubts that we were seeing **serious cracks in the algorithmic search foundations of the house that Google built**. But I was afraid to write an article about it for fear I’d be…

> Content creation is big business, and there are big players involved. For example, Associated Content, which produces 10,000 new articles per month, was purchased by Yahoo! for $100 million, in 2010. Demand Media has 8,000 writers who produce 180,000 new articles each month. It generated more than $200 million in revenue in 2009 and planning an initial public offering valued at about $1.5 billion. This content is what ends up as the landfill in the garbage websites that you find all over the web. And these…