We all have seen that every search for a commercial product leads to a billion TripAdvisor, Ebay, Amazon and other big brand sites.
What are the odds that Google is getting affiliate commissions for these search results?
Notice how every outgoing link from Google search results is a big ass string containing a hash linking to all the crap they spied out of you. That hash can easily be an affiliate tracking link.
It'd be trivial to have private contracts between these big brands and Google for them to get privileges in the SERPs.
The reason I ask is we all know Google search results are not natural. They throttle traffic, control commercial traffic to their will, etc. Give me one good reason why Google wouldn't be cashing in on this massive spam? Suddenly Amazon and Ebay, both of which have affiliate programs, are dominating SERPs and we're supposed to believe all that traffic is FREE??
I say it's not free. What say you?