brotherhood_of_LAN - 7:46 pm on Aug 29, 2002 (gmt 0)

Well, maybe they're already crossing the line ;)

That IPO that was talked about (sorry, not familiar with IPO's) would require shareholders money yes?

Google has shown us that they can run an efficient search engine that is possible with X amount of resources.

IMHO, shareholders would be interested in the sort of information that Everyman mentions, like, who searches for what etc etc etc.

It would seem the effectiveness of pagerank is dependent on their current hardware and how fast they can crawl and process their results? Also, pagerank wouldn't matter if the websites available to google refused to be crawled.

So, either way, google would be aiming to meet shareholders needs while at the same time banning the very same sites that provide google with its results.

Makes the ethics issue cloudy for me- but I appreciate google is just another business that needs capital.

Everyman is saying pagerank is undemocratic....I guess I'm saying humbly that Google,shareholders and ethics don't mix

/added
and the whole idea of people manipulating pagerank IMO falls in between everymans and googles view on the spectrum of things. G needs websites, websites need pagerank and visitors.
If they bring in the shareholders, the resources they have to execute their pagerank algo will be dependent on the money they get from shareholders.