[jerf]

"an SEO attack could turn 'online deg' into a valid keyword."

If you have that much power, you probably have a better way to spend it. Also I would bet that suggest keywords come from user searches themeselves, not the web. That's why I suspect the impact of this is probably relatively minimal.

Call me crazy, but I think Google just might have considered the SEO impact before deploying this. If it's not literally on a checklist somewhere for deployment of search features, I'd be stunned.