[eman]

Google (Live, Yahoo and others) could very easily forge direct relationships with porn producers/distributors and totally eliminate the linklist/tgp/directory model (they may already be preparing to do so).

The advantages to the producing businesses are obvious. Most obviously, Google (or whoever) could guarantee a precisely measured flow of highly convertible traffic to the producer's sites. Measure this against the effectiveness of the hit-or-miss affiliate model.

I suspect that Google (and the other big SEs), merely tolerate the presence of Link-o-rama, DD, Tommy or whoever. When the time is ripe they will drop all porn-promoting sites at a stroke. After a week or two nobody will notice that they've gone.

Discuss.

PS - since linklists/tgps/direcories have a purely commercial objective there's no logical reason for a commercial search engine (Google etc) to give them any credence - let alone prominence.