Cory Doctorow: Search is too important to leave to one company – even Google
I find myself agreeing with Cory Doctorow on this, even as much as I like and respect Google, that the power Google wields in determining importance and even access on the web should be examined critically. I've heard these types of questions about Google's power to promote or effectively ban a web site raised before, and Google's response has historically been something akin to "people are not involved, it's an algorithm." As our world gets more and more mediated through the eyes of technology, we need to be mindful of the effect of algorithms, too. It may sound like the stuff of science-fiction, but a computer's choice should be just as suspect as a human's, where that choice has so much of an influence over our lives.
