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tom potts wrote: >
One of googles problems (from a users point of view) is commercialisation. If you can buy higher ratings then the system is open to abuse - and thereforefails.
You can't buy a higher rank in Google's results.The only way it seems to affect Google rankings directly is to alter the Content, alter the web (link to content, change URL), alter the algorithm (Google only), make a law forbidding them to return specific content in your bit of the web (China).
Try searching for something invented and you'll find sites listed that want to sell it to you! TOO MUCH NOISE!
No idea what you are on about, post an example. But some people clearly pollute the system deliberately to gain traffic. Google tend to pull such sites when notified, or try and create algorithmns to weed them out.
Mark J Ray, discussed the issue of ethical alternative search engines in his blogs, when Google announced its intent to assist the Chinese government in its censorship many months back.
Hard to find Marks blog, when I get a moment I'll check the discussions we had at the time.
Basically the other large search engines have already sold out as well, so you are left with smaller search engines, although some of those I tried were very effective and had surprisingly comprehensive results. One also gave you a thumbnail preview of the page the result was from, nice feature. Although it would be hard to be sure where the data is coming from for some of them, are they just buying them from Google.
The real issue underlying this is the behaviour of public companies in placing profit above ethical considerations. Google's "do no evil" became obselete the moment it went public, and the Chinese decision followed a week or two later, along with some other less ethical changes.
I also believe this is distinct from trading with Communist China, as Google have to take active measures to enforce Chinas governments censorship.
Some subtle decisions to make here in ones ethical consumerism. Especially as Google are now one of the worlds largest advertising firms.
Of course there is the argument that merely 'not doing evil' isn't enough. http://www.tartarus.org/~martin/essays/burkequote.html SimonBTW: My understanding is Google is pulling results that would not be available to Chinese surfers, because of the filtering the Chinese government already do to content. So this is returning only results that would be available to the surfer. However note that Googles Cache feature would probably have bypassed the Chinese firewalls.
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