"I don't know the answer. If claiming all local search results were to cause Google to lose objectivity / market share in organic search, then we wouldn't be any further along. If they could continue to do the best job in search and own local search results, we'd certainly be farther along then we are today in bringing local advertising online. I guess we'll get there when we get there." - Lawrence Coburn
"Fred, I think it would be a bad idea to have the dominant search engine own such a significant chunk of the landing pages / local search results. It would put a lot of pressure on the objectivity of their search results, which to date, has powered all of their innovation in other areas.
I also believe that a Google ownership of the local landing page, and by association, local advertising space, would put them squarely in the "too big to fail" camp that you have spoken out against." - Lawrence Coburn