Google and its plans to Monetize Places

I think it is widely known now that google will very soon now begin to roll out its project where it converts 'Places' into a similar sort of Adwords revenue model.
I have read articles that are suggesting that G will be turning the entire first page and its real estate over to the paid places model.

End of the day G is a Corporate Company and exists to make money for its shareholders so it would be pretty naive of them not to use this to extract income from its SERPS.

The changes it made towards the end of 2010 by renaming google places from maps and insisting on a business email address to be able to register simply reinforces the fact that it is going to become a paid model.

So how are we going to prepare for this? Clearly those of us with interests that justify an entry on the places system will look to try and game it but it is changing all the time. At the moment my sites only appear in places for one or two of the keywords that I target. I get a hell of a lot more places in the organics for other kw long tail and not, in some cases above the places entries some below. Big change for last year where I dominated the (maps)system but my account was restricted over the winter I presume because I put kw in the business title) and I am slowly trying to rebuild the trust with my new account.

Clearly if places is going to take over the entire first page as a paid for business model and relegate high placed organic to page 2 then this could have implications for a lot of us.

How can we prepare for this? The obvious solution is to acquire and share the knowledge on how to dominate (the new) Places.

my google places ranks about half way down on the first page, i couldn't however justify paying google much if anything at all going on the amount of additional business it brings in right now. This is a local business i am referrring to (not IM).

If google does indeed monetize places and the entire first page will be populated purely by places ad's then google will itself become little more a glorified paid internet directory.
I would't even mind so much but half the time google will return un related places results, i know there is a fair few listed in the results for some of my keywords, this is very off putting.

Perhaps they are drawing businesses in and giving them front page positions making them reliant on the system for when it does go over to paid?

End of the day you could be right and it could lead to a worse experience for the end user which certainly defeats the object. G is already losing market share to Bing and Yahoo and will not want to do anything to make that silde worse.

i doubt that very much gp will be not converted to a paid listing makes no sense at all

If G does that, they'll shoot themselves in the foot. Just like they took over Yahoo, somebody will take over G if they're not careful.

I'm not sure they will sadly. Google's been operating what's called a 'Destroy Pricing' business plan. Basically you undercut your competitors and offer more value than them, until you have completely crippled the competition and your name is synonymous with the industry (Like Walmart or Tesco's basically).
Then once you're position is secured, you completely change face, and start making profit (In the same way that the supermarkets in the UK have killed off all the off-licenses by selling booze cheaper than anyone else can sell it, and then announced to the government that there should be a set minimum price per unit of alcohol...).

People don't say "Search for it", they say "Google it". There has been an ENTIRE generation who have only experienced the internet through Google, and from what I can tell, Google thinks now's the time to make it's move (They're deal with Verizon to basically roll out paid for results on mobile networks was the first indication....)