Bad internet for the day

Joe Kukura has an article at AllVoices about Google's new look:

Finding information on a Google search might soon be a little more difficult, but finding pretty pictures, video ads, and sponsored links will certainly get a heck of a lot easier. Google has confirmed they're toying with a new format for your search engine result pages that implements flashy high-res banner ads, company logos, maps, and other eye-catching online widgets on top of your search results.
To make room for all these eye-catching online widgets, your search results will move further down the page. Quite a bit further, in fact. According to an assessment of the first few batches of these search results, the ads take up a full eighty-plus percent of your screen, leaving only about twelve percent of the screen to show the information for which you were searching.
AdAge has confirmed that Google is adding banner ads and more advertising into search results after the blog SearchEngineLand spotted these ads in the wild last week. According to an assessment by Ars Technica, ads take up eighty-eight percent of the screen on this new Google search result format.
Right now the ad format is still a trial balloon, being used in the results for paying clients like Virgin America, Crate & Barrel, and Southwest Airlines. (The Virgin America results are shown above, albeit only the top part of the search results page).
"We're currently running a very limited, US-only test, in which advertisers can include an image as part of the search ads that show in response to certain branded queries," a Google rep told AdAge. Google insists the format is only being used on desktop computer search results, and will not be used for all search results, only for paying ad clients who buy the package.
Still, it's quite curious considering that Google once claimed they would never use banner ads in search results. "There will be no banner ads on the Google home page or web search results pages," at-the-time VP of Search Marissa Mayer said in 2005. "There will not be crazy, flashy, graphical doodads flying and popping up all over the Google site. Ever."
But Mayer has flown over to Yahoo, and it's a different world for online advertising compared to 2005. Google's ad business is still quite healthy, but their cost per click is declining (cost per click defines how much Google charges advertisers). Google feels that flashier and more attention-grabbing ads will offset this decline, because advertisers will pay more for them, and we will, ostensibly, click on these ads more frequently.
The ad format is a pretty noticeable change, especially compared to what Google search results pages looked like in 2005. But the ecosystem is changing and it's going to change even more once Google begins using your image and online comments in display ads.

Rico says that won't last long...