Aaron from SEO Book has been talking about this for a long time – Google has been slowly but methodically using its monopoly to destroy entire internet niches.

I noticed the other day while searching for ‘what is my ip’ that Google now directly responds to the IP. Check out whatismyip.com’s traffic:

For the past year I’ve been doing my darndest to get away from anything that relies on Google – for traffic (eg DealCatch) or anything they would directly compete with (eg Examine). I’m not there yet, but I’m feeling more confident as time passes. I’m hoping that 50% of our revenue by 2013 will have nothing to do with Google (at any point of the transactional funnel).

I hope you are doing the same.