Good sharing, and good thoughts guys. If i can make 1% of that what RetailMeNot.com
makes, I`ll be very happy :)

I am not 100% sure. But if you think about it why would they not? Lets say you were the CEO of google and you bought out numerous up and coming sites. Would you NOT want these sites to get top billing?

Like Telmari said there is a lot of mystery when it comes to Google rankings. When and if Google does manipulate listings we will never know until someone, somewhere digs deep into how and if anything was every manipulated.

And if it was...who is going to step forward? And can anything be done? There is no law (that I know of) that says "you cannot manipulate your own search engine rankings".

This is interesting - but the author's findings aren't really proof of anything. Just because a company is acquired by another who invests in Google does not necessarily mean that their high search rankings have anything to do with that. If they really were/are the best at what they do, I would expect them to rank well in Google regardless of their affiliation.

That said, I'm not 100% certain about much of anything Google related - there's always a lot of mystery there. But on the other hand, they are a for-profit business, and as long as they're not doing anything unethical/illegal, then I'd say, what else would we expect?