Posted 12/14/08 at 02:12:52 PM by Justin Kerr

Articles have been sprouting up around the web in response to Google’s admission that staff will help hand pick search results displayed to users. Many of these articles are rather opinionated, but we will leave it up to you to decide if this is really the end of search as we know it.

For years now Google has washed their hands of all responsibility for its search results using variations on a phrase that has been prominently posted at the bottom of sites like news.google.com for years now. “The selection and placement of stories on this page were determined automatically by a computer program”. In general however, our belief that Google’s results were a 100 per cent derivative of the page rank system was mostly one of faith. Under this system popularity is determined by counting links from other popular pages around the web as a way of gauging an articles creditability. Presumably some human intervention was used to prevent people from gaming the system, but that’s about it.

This week Google’s Marissa Meyer explained that going forward “editorial judgments will play a key role in Google searches”. Mayer also hinted about the possibility of using the data supplied by users using the new wiki search. Currently changes made using this method only influence your own search results, but it’s hard to argue that it might not have some practical use in crowd sourcing the relevance of certain searches. But with the abuse we have witnessed in the past, such as the anti spore backlash that was unleashed on Amazon, would human oversight be required to help moderate the impact of such user submitted data?

Assuming Google doesn’t abuse its power when interfering with the page ranking system, is this really such a bad thing? Hit the jump and let us know.   

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Posted 12/10/08 at 02:53:44 PM by Andy Salisbury

According to a recent interview with Google’s vice president of search products and user experience, Marissa Mayer, Chrome is on its way out of the beta stages.

Having only been in beta for three months, the move is notably impressive. Google is hoping to cater to many customers, including OEMs, that can’t offer the browser until it is official. They’re also planning to bundle Chrome with the Google Toolbar and other Google Apps.

The timely release comes alongside a large push by Google to redefine the browser around the open Web. Their plans to have Chrome work as a platform where users can run their applications are ambitious, but admirable. With any luck, we can see some concrete results in the coming year.

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