Physics Geek

Google jumping the shark?

Yeah, I know, "jump the shark" has jumped the shark. Anyway, it appears that the most used search engine on the planet will start to give preference to the big media types such as CNN and MSNBC. Excerpt:

The largest search engine on the Internet has plans to join the media elite – giving preference to such establishment news agencies as CNN and the BBC in searches over new independent media enterprises.

As Google explains it, the rankings will be "according to quality rather than simply the date and relevance to search terms."
...
Currently, the company's search engine responds with thousands of "hits" in response to simple entries such as "Iraq," which lead to news websites. These are ranked either in order of relevance or by date, so that the most recent or most focused appear at the top of the huge list.

"This means that articles carrying more authority, say from CNN or the BBC, can be ousted from the first page of results, simply because they are not as recent or as relevant to the keyword entered in the search line," explains a news account in the New Scientist. "Now, Google, whose name has become synonymous with Internet searching, plans to build a database that will compare the track record and credibility of all news sources around the world, and adjust the ranking of any search results accordingly."

In other words, Google is going to be making value judgments about which news organizations are more credible.

Gee, who wants to bet that CBS and Dan Rather would be judged more credible than LGF or Powerline?

I think I'll stick with A9 as my search engine of choice.

Posted by Physics Geek at May 5, 2005 03:41 PM Stumble It!