I remember when I first started to surf the web in 98. I never liked Yahoo then and still don't - too much information and over advertising on its pages. Ask Jeeves I felt a waist of time - search results were never what I was looking for. I mainly used my ISP's search box on their portal site (I was niave).
I soon discovered Google and loved its quick simple method of displaying results - This is how SE's should be, only displaying the basic information of it's results, if I want to know more, then give me the option and don't try to ram it down my throat.
Paid inclusion - now this is something that is not welcome by myself as a small businessman. When I started to submit sites in 2000, I most certainly did not want to pay to get included. The web was designed as a method of sharing data/information for free (or at least as cheap as possible), that's how it should stay. If I need to get noticed but my marketplace is very competitve, then yes - I would have to speculate to accumulate, but the SE's need to develope a better means of allowing paid advertising or 'sponsors links'. I do like Google's AdWords and I am currently using it myself. It's there in a clear position but seperate from the normal results.
It's bad news for
SEO's if more crawlers and independant robots are unleashed, it's difficult enough to keep up with one SE's bot, let alone a score. I do suppose that could mean work though... :)
My biggest hope is the weeding out of linkrot and killing more of those SPAM sites (no one likes a cheat).... Good luck to all in 2004..