micklearn - 4:41 am on May 25, 2010 (gmt 0)

Food for thought these days?...

"...we expect that advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers."

Later on...

"But we believe the issue of advertising causes enough mixed incentives that it is crucial to have a competitive search engine that is transparent and in the academic realm."

Source: "The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine"

Something changed along the way...and they appear to be *very* focused on that path right now.