The NYTimes’ recent bit on the Borgle‘s censorship included the following entertaining excerpt:
“In the future, Wu [some scholar, formerly of Google] said, it might slant its search results to favor its own media applications or to bury its competitors. If Google allowed its search results to be biased for economic reasons, it would transform the way we think about Google as a neutral free-speech tool. The only editor is supposed to be a neutral algorithm. But that would make it all the more insidious if the search algorithm were to become biased.”
Awww shucks. Can we pet it too 
?
Seriously, how does the NYT publish something like that without having at least one search marketing person point out how the Borgle really ranks stuff? For more on the topic, keep your eyes peeled on Youmoz, where I’m hoping to have a blogpost on the topic published soon.
Here’s a neat hypothetical – all other things being equal in comparison to the Borgle’s own sites, could a critical blogpost/site rank for “Google”?
Tags: Algorithms, Google