Google killed the affiliate marketing star

Okay, so my title doesn’t quite dance to the tune of "Video Killed the Radio Star", but on a particularly busy week in the who’s-buying-who sphere, it’s tempting to think Google’s determined to leverage everything in existence. SEObook points out that as soon as eBay bought StumbleUpon, Google released its own stumbling bookmark tool

Google can buy out or clone any service that threatens their ad market and media dominance.

Since StumbleUpon was an AdSense publisher, Google saw their growth rate, and had better market data as to their value than eBay possibly could have. As soon as they started talking about sales, Google could make the best offer, or decide if it was just cheaper to clone something in-house, then overshadow competing news by adding the feature to the Google suite ahead of the buyout news.

It’s so tinfoil hat, but there’s no speculation involved here. Imagine if those pet rocks that were so ubiquitous a few decades ago had all had spy equipment inside them, tracking our every move. The person monitoring the rocks would have the option of recruiting you or stealing your ideas - whichever is easier.

The money AdSense has made so far - off click fraud, too - may pale in comparison to the value of it acting as a bit of stats tracking code 97% of the web has stuffed happily into its pages.