[bluebaby]

What a paranoid post. Google "manipulates" results for financial gain? The assumption that there is a pure solution to a search query is ignorant of search and information retrieval, which fundamentally rely on human-curated content.

PageRank also relied on "Human-curated content". In fact, anything having to do with natural language processing does so in some way.

This is a far cry from saying that Google is hand-tuning search results. In fact, Google has only begun to do so recently as a response to government-orders to hide terms relating to media piracy or Chinese politics. This post displays a lot of romantic confusion about the effects of social media on web search.