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Of the references you list, only the PageRank one has anything to do with the search algorithm. It's a great paper. The backrub paper (http://infolab.stanford

Of the references you list, only the PageRank one has anything to do with the search algorithm. It's a great paper. The backrub paper (http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html) is also great, and has been a personal inspiration, however that information pre-dates the founding of Google as a corporation, and the search algorithm been developed in complete secrecy for more than a decade since then. There are more than 200 other signals used to determine relevance, and PageRank is only one of them (http://www.google.com/corporate/tech.html http://www.google.com/corporate/tech.html). The others are completely secret as far as I can tell, and there's no indication what weight is given to PageRank now. I'm not attributing malice to the secrecy, but there's no way to know what biases are embodied in the algorithm, and I think that's a serious concern. I don't think it's unreasonable to claim that Google is as important as the press now as a source of public information. The biases of the press are very much a concern for society, so I think we should be equally concerned about the potential for bias in the search results. As for Gruber, my guess is that he feels that the discourse in the tech press/blogosphere has demonized Apple heavily for the closed nature of the App store, whereas Google is praised for its 'openness' with much less examination of what that really means. Personally I think that Gruber can be childish about this, but I think both companies deserve rational criticism. I'm more worried about Google than I am about Apple because their secrecy is about how public information is prioritized. I do have similar concerns about how Apple prioritizes applications in the App Store, but for now that seems a lot less important than how Google prioritizes websites.

arebop 16y ago
> Of the references you list, only the PageRank one has anything to do with the search algorithm. ... > There are more than 200 other signals used to determine relevance, and PageRank is only one of them (http://www.google.com/corporate/tech.html http://www.google.com/corporate/tech.html). The others are completely secret as far as I can tell, and there's no indication what weight is given to PageRank now. I gave a link to http://research.google.com/pubs/papers.html http://research.google.com/pubs/papers.html which links to http://research.google.com/pubs/InformationRetrieval.html http://research.google.com/pubs/InformationRetrieval.html which links to http://research.google.com/pubs/pub35599.html http://research.google.com/pubs/pub35599.html and http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1571941.1572114 http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1571941.1572114 among many other papers that talk about signals other than link structure and means of combining signals to derive a relevance ranking. But, sure, Google has large scope and importance, and they do have secrets (about search rankings and other topics). Policy statements and economics papers they've published about the alignment of users' interests with their own are only suggestive and don't guarantee good behavior. As long as they have secrets we can't be sure they're not doing evil (or even just failing to serve each of us as well and faithfully as possible).
- rbarooah 16y ago
  Thanks for pointing out those other links. One of them is about news, and not search, but the others do shed light on algorithms that might be part of how Google does ranking. But as we agree, the actual algorithm is secret. Incidentally, I'm less worried about deliberate evil than I am about systematic biases that we don't know about. Here on HN people show a lot of interest in cognitive biases and the importance of being aware of them. I think the biases of the 'extra-cognitive' systems we use are just as interesting.

arebop 16y ago

> Of the references you list, only the PageRank one has anything to do with the search algorithm. ... > There are more than 200 other signals used to determine relevance, and PageRank is only one of them (http://www.google.com/corporate/tech.html http://www.google.com/corporate/tech.html). The others are completely secret as far as I can tell, and there's no indication what weight is given to PageRank now. I gave a link to http://research.google.com/pubs/papers.html http://research.google.com/pubs/papers.html which links to http://research.google.com/pubs/InformationRetrieval.html http://research.google.com/pubs/InformationRetrieval.html which links to http://research.google.com/pubs/pub35599.html http://research.google.com/pubs/pub35599.html and http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1571941.1572114 http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1571941.1572114 among many other papers that talk about signals other than link structure and means of combining signals to derive a relevance ranking. But, sure, Google has large scope and importance, and they do have secrets (about search rankings and other topics). Policy statements and economics papers they've published about the alignment of users' interests with their own are only suggestive and don't guarantee good behavior. As long as they have secrets we can't be sure they're not doing evil (or even just failing to serve each of us as well and faithfully as possible).

rbarooah 16y ago
Thanks for pointing out those other links. One of them is about news, and not search, but the others do shed light on algorithms that might be part of how Google does ranking. But as we agree, the actual algorithm is secret. Incidentally, I'm less worried about deliberate evil than I am about systematic biases that we don't know about. Here on HN people show a lot of interest in cognitive biases and the importance of being aware of them. I think the biases of the 'extra-cognitive' systems we use are just as interesting.