[maxtower]

Perhaps the people he knows just optimize for google. In the investment literature I have seen, google owns the dominant share of search, but MSN and Yahoo both have sizeable chunks. I also remember reading somewhere that ask.com is currently the fastest growing search engine and they have a lot of ads on TV. I haven't seen google or Yahoo relying on TV ads.
John Chow seems to know what he is talking about, but I can't believe google is 90% with all the other options available.
As far as search technology goes, I know google has even been criticized for their search engine because it creates a chicken/egg problem for new sites to get good rankings as a result of the importance placed on links. Even if you have the best content on a particular subject, if no one links to your site, no one will ever find you through google. The criticism is valid I think because of the example of academic research... a lot of valuble information never gets a big volume of links and therefore will remain in the shadows of more popular but watered down content.

oops. I got carried away on a tangent.