I agree that breaking up Google is a good idea. Way back in the mists of time, the main way we found out about each other's work was from links in other blogs.

I agree that breaking up Google is a good idea. Way back in the mists of time, the main way we found out about each other's work was from links in other blogs. It tended to be a virtuous circle, but starting out was haphazard at best. You could get some attention in replies at the bottom of posts, but then the spam came and killed those off. I think that one way out (with the goal of making conversation independent of google) would be for us to pick up RSS again, and perhaps come up with some RSS specific search engines. Some sort of federated mechanism for ratings and reputation would help.