I came upon an article on Wired that mentions that the online mega-retailer, Amazon, has stepped up its investment in search technology and announced it will be developing search engine technology for comparison shopping. The interesting thing, as the article points out, is that Amazon plans on licensing this technology to other companies which would effectively mean they are offering to license it to their competition.
Currently, Amazon uses Google to search its site, which also has a comparison shopping search engine, Froogle. The real gem of the article is at the end where they mention that Amazon has appointed search engine guru Udi Manber to be in charge of recruiting for the Amazon division that will be developing this technology.
Ever on top of the search engine market, the brilliant minds of Google went to work quick. What did they come up with? Why, a sponsored link of course. Search Google for Udi Manber and the top link is "Work at Google".
I wonder who the sponsor of that link could be?
[UPDATE:] I just noticed in the right-side column of the same google search page yet another sponsored link. It's a "Work at Amazon" link. This is just too funny. Amazon announces the appointment of a search engine expert to head up recruiting for development of a technology that will compete with Google (whom Amazon already has a working relationship of some sort). Google fights back by placing a sponsored link to their hiring page at the top of a search for said search engine expert. Not to be out done, Amazon then PURCHASES ad space on the very same Google search term in order for an Amazon hiring link to also appear on the search result page.
Oh man...it's like a crazy soap opera. I can't stop laughing...
[UPDATE 2:] A friend commented that he didn't see the Amazon sponsor link when checking out the search result page. Now that I try it again, I see that he's right. Lucky for me, I still had a tab open in Mozilla that shows it. Here's a link to an image of it.