"it's all users, not our fault" I don't think it's 'aggregate users choice' they use, I think it's ultimately 'page rank' reputation at the core of it. Also,

"it's all users, not our fault" I don't think it's 'aggregate users choice' they use, I think it's ultimately 'page rank' reputation at the core of it. Also, I think if they were using 'user choice popularity' the news would be HuffPo, Buzzfeed, TMZ, Breitbart etc. - we on HN don't read this stuff but it's very, very popular stuff. Consider that HuffPo for example is more popular that most news orgs on that list, and they do actually have a lot of in-house content ... so why are they not added? Clearly Google has made some kind of editorial choice. This is not just regular search, it's news, so this becomes more important. I don't think there is a way around having some kind of editorial opinion, so it should hopefully be transparent, maybe pliable, possibly even regulated.