"The launch of a new algorithm shocked the online marketing world," ugh.

But yeah, it's in Google's interests to provide straight answers on their own page, especially when they're promoting questions. SEO providers might provide false information, so why not have the answer to "how tall is Ryan Gosling" or "what is the nutritional information on cake". I think it'll be up to us to guess common questions, and to really spearhead local SEO. 'Where's the best chip shop" is a subjective search, and so local businesses will need to work on getting good ratings in Google places (or whatever it's called now.) 

Ultimately eithical SEO isn't affected and we should continue to do what we do (i.e. create great content and build great links). No matter how searchers interact with Google in the future, whether it's by old-school typing methods of today or via spoken word, the fact remains that Google wants to display the best search results possible. This will never change.

Thanks for your comment, James.

I agree that for now it looks like the way we do SEO should not change much. However whether Humminbird really is what we think it is will be clear in some time. I'd say we all should keep a finger on the pulse of any slight change we see in SERPs and stay alerted.