Thomas: While it is true that Google doesn't edit contents, from my research, I think it is safe to say there is a lot underneath this "efficient indexing" of websites. Each search engine provider (of which there are 3-4 major ones - Google, yahoo, Microsoft, and AskJeeves) is striving not only to produce the most efficient index of results but the most "relevant" index of results. This is a tricky issue - is a neo-Nazi site the most relevant hit for the search "Jew"? Or, more commonly, when someone searches for "apple" do they mean the fruit or the computer? It also means, as any search engine optimiser will tell you, that there is a lot of very active blacklisting of sites which are perceived to be fraudulent. Therefore I think that a concentrated search market is likely to be a bad thing: we may want choice in what kind of results we think are relevant. Certainly those who live outside the major advertising markets are finding that their versions of the internet are not particularly well-searched, as commerce drives the indexing efforts of all the major engines. Elizabeth Van Couvering PhD student London School of Economics, Department of Media & Communications http://personal.lse.ac.uk/vancouve/
From Thomas Koenig:
But Google does not edit the contents (safe for a few webpaes on Google itself produces), but just indexes them quite efficiently. It provides thus the infrastructure to effiently access all sorts of news sites. I know of no goverment or open-surce project, which does it more "balanced".