Is 'poof' the [near-future] meaning of dictionary.com?

Chadwick Matlin, in an interesting article in today's Washington Post Business section, took a close look at the current state of online dictionaries and how Google, if it wanted to, could effectively destroy them — in a heartbeat.

Long story short: when you put a word into the Google search box, you don't get its meaning but rather a list of sites which offer the definition.

With Microsoft's Bing, on the other hand, when you put a word in the search box, the definition appears up top as the first result.

Wrote Matlin, "The dictionary sites know that a new day is coming.... Bing, remember, is small-bore. It routes only 10.7 percent of the country's searches compared with Google's 64.6 percent. (Though it is gaining market share quickly.) The thing that would really upset the dictionary sites' business would be a change in the way Google handles their content. What happens if Google starts acting like Bing?"

"If Google goes Bing, then dictionaries' traffic will go poof."

Indeed.