SiteOrigin - 10:45 pm on Feb 22, 2007 (gmt 0)

if they can nail down legitimate users

I imagine Google would have little trouble in filtering out illegitimate users. Think about all the information they'll have about a Google account – search history, click history, browsing history (through analytics), just to name a few variables in their arsenal. They'll be able to tell exactly how legitimate a user is and weight their affect on the search results accordingly. If this were a simple “one user, one vote” system, they wouldn't be applying for a patent.

Faking a natural looking Google account using raw CPU power would probably be about as difficult as getting your computer to generate a creative writing essay for you. The way I see it, it would require man hours to create a set of legitimate looking accounts and use them to influence the search results. Man hours that would probably be better spent doing real SEO.

[edited by: SiteOrigin at 10:46 pm (utc) on Feb. 22, 2007]