This may be fallout from trademark owners losing their various lawsuits against Google for allowing competitors to advertise on their trademark as keyword. (See this article: http://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2013/05/google_crushes....) So now they may be the top organic result (or even a navigation result) but JetBlue or United or whatever can buy a banner on top that has their airline telling the searcher how much better they are than the other guys. This is great for Google, now Southwest has to pay to advertise or get side swiped by a competitor, and because its an auction system their competitor can bid up the keywords to negatively impact Southwest, forcing higher ad rates. Win win win for Google, not so great for Southwest Airlines).
If they follow through with what you suggest, I wonder if it will be the straw that breaks the camels back in regards to an antitrust lawsuit by the government.
Why should that be the case? Google had defended and won most cases around the world where brands accused it of allowing competitors to show ads against their keyword searches. Why should banner ads be treated any differently by antitrust regulators?
The issue that I see (IANAL) is that these incremental changes to embedded advertising within search encroach ever-closer to a form of paid-search. When you own 60-70% of search, and you start requiring companies to pay in order to appear above the fold, we may have a problem.
I'm pretty sure the banner can only appear when you have the top organic search result. So JetBlue couldn't buy the banner for Southwest. Furthermore, the idea is that the user is trying to find Southwest so redirecting them to JetBlue would make not sense.
It may not necessarily be a win-win for Google. It could actually make search worse. Consider if I search for Southwest Airlines and get a big Jet Blue banner that takes up 88% of vertical space, this would actually make me very agitated as a search consumer - it's almost the same as displaying a popup ad.
