Absolutely false! Google uses the same financial resources Yahoo uses and does NOT refer to Yahoo for ANYTHING! Bing is an inferior search engine and you feel happier?! Makes me question any advice you would ever give. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot. You switch from a company known for doing so much good in the world to one of the most corrupt on the planet. Wise choice, Darth Vader.
The contention that google has become worse after its panda update is applicable to those who have lost considerable traffic; but generally speaking, it is a major blow to content farms. Of course, some genuine sites might have been affected by the latest update but one can only hope that google will make corrections in its algo to be fair with all genuine sites...
I'm going to tack on to what dairyman said. Really, those who should be concerned are the ones google targeted specifically i.e. content farms. Good, original, and useful content will fetch more and more of a premium. In short, you can still make loads of money off Google, you just need to know what they are looking for. Like in any business you have to adapt and change to be successful. You can't just throw a tantrum and quit if Google tries to improve their service to searchers.
From my point of view, it is worse in providing SERP, just search 'hosting coupon' in Google. You can find that only 5 sites occupied, first ten results. I won't say there is nothing happened so before panda update, but this is too worse i can say when compare with the result that i got before panda update. Also i won't say not listing a same site web pages more than one time for a keyword, but it is not healthy i can say. Your view and experience like me? Always Welcome!
I have 3 websites and they still rank well in Google for my primary keywords except the 2 secondary keywords for one of my sites. But these 2 keywords have been changing even before the panda update so I think I'm not affected. I guess the only ones affected are the ones with duplicate contents.
I think you are right, Google is only dropping those websites ranking which are either copied content from other websites or are not useful for searchers or readers, as i consider Google is doing best for search engine but ultimately most of the bloggers or websites owners are not happy with Google Panda Update.
The purpose of the Panda algorithm update was to rank down sites with a low rate of original content and sites with a high rate of ads over content. Google planned to rank higher the most useful pages for their users. However, as an algorithm is not a human being, there has been a lot of misjudgement and so a bunch of "good guy" sites were affected going down in the SERPs. I'm not sure how will Google fix that, but they should certainly do something, as their reputation is at risk.
I think Google is still THE search engine and I think they will make corrections soon because if they didn't Bing or other search engines would take its place. But I think, for those who are expecting the end of Google that they still have to wait for a few decades for their wish to come true.
How is this affecting sites that are selling links? Should they increase amount and quality of the content?
I am feeling myself a bit lucky as my sites' rankings are at their best. As I always focused on Google's theory "Content is king" and than always put the original content over them and now this is the time on what I get paid.