Before the arrival of Google, using a search engine to find information on the web was almost a last resort. Entering a few keywords and hitting search was like using a one-arm-bandit-machine, the results seemed to come in at random and you were lucky if one result in a thousand was relevent to your search query. If you didn’t know the URL of what you were looking for, the next best thing to try was searching for information using the Yahoo Directory; navigating through the levels of sub-directories until eventually you found the information you were looking for. So, domain names became hot property as they were the only means by which your site could be found. But now, it seems that Google is changing that; so effective is its unique search algorithm, that it reduces the need for an easy-to-remember domain name to attract people to your site. If your site contains relevent information and presents it well, then Google will lead people there, even if it has a URL longer than the human genome sequence. Of course, for companies who control domain names and make money out of the them, this is a bad thing. Read more about what is being called the ‘Google Effect’.