Re: <nettime> googological digest [hwang, douwe]

[steven schkolne <steven@schkolne.com>]

>
>
>right, it's not one, but it is used as one. to me, that entire page seems 
>to try to give the impression that the rankings are done by neutral 
>technology, unfettered by human biases. look at 
>
given the description of the pagerank algorithm

this googlism....  "microsoft" -> microsoft corp's sites, "microsoft 
sucks" -> microsoft sucks sites, and the "weapons of mass destruction" 
thing all follow....

especially as every single news story about the WMD site online 
increases its rating

google could make its process more clearer by revealing its database -- 
that way we could doublecheck them

but the point -- that google's technology is a political one -- holds 
because its algorithm encodes the political structure of popularity...  

>note that the original results are weighted toward information put out by 
>microsoft about themselves. is this objective, high-quality, important 
>information as google claims? (see cue p. doll's old "cuejack" project for 
>one response to that.)
>  
>

either they are tampering with their results, or their results merely 
reflect the popular opinions of the web page writers themselves.  any 
suggestions for a better measure of value?  none of them are objective.

steven

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