Th3 Core

Why don't they just turn over a billion lines of code and only allow access to one person. I can't imagine any genius programmer let alone run-of-the-mill technical SEO who would get very far with that.

And would Google even lose a competitive edge? Much of the challenge is in implementing that code, no?

Unless they force Google to provide a team of engineers to explain the code, would anyone get that far? I guess based on Google's objections, G thinks they would.

No doubt the codebase would be unfathomable to any human in any reasonable amount of time, but tbf there could be a smoking gun. They do have a bunch of human raters after all, and the instructions given to them are part of the parcel.

I remember (rightly?) some kind of update mentioned by GoogleGuy on WmW that could have been specific about payday loans, and a day later someone had mocked them by ranking #1 for it and a day later they were gone from that spot.

Seems like the defacto position is G is a black box that serves a public purpose and no one can be properly arsed to unravel how it does what it does, let it do its magic.

Not all that keen on them having to publicise their stuff, though.

I don't claim to be an expert in it at all but I'd wager you could easily prove human manipulation.

For starters, half their knowledge graph is based on wikipedia, and their hierarchy is entirely human in the same way dmoz was.

Add in their human raters and human guidelines, then the programmers doing what they do, seems a bit fallacious to say their code is in the lap of the gods rather than their intention. Every algo is biased one way or another, unless G has found some kind of universal good we don't know about. Surely in the case of this court case it wouldn't be hard to prove that G has targeted 'a particular kind of site'.

Seems like a labour of love rather than a question, proving that how they rank stuff is 'natural' or 'biased'. It's a good angle for Mojeek (and DDG et al), let's just have  bunch of perspectives rather than an overwhelming decision maker.

I mean, surely it's not hard to argue that half the 'algo makers' job is to counteract specific and example human behaviour they've seen over the years, isn't that how they evolve the algo. Ultimately it boils down to what they think is the true benefit of the user, and with all the G properties versus the entire world's alternatives... seems like it's not too hard an argument to offer the world's information as a neutral portal rather than the insidious middle man.