walkman - 1:55 pm on Sep 7, 2011 (gmt 0)

Conspiracy theories don't die becuase it's obvious to reasonable people that manipulation is happening No. Conspiracy theories don't die because they are not falsifiable. Epistemology 101.

Without getting in a philosophical discussion, we can look at certain things and draw our own conclusions about Google. Is it 100% sure? Nope, but then even the death penalty is given to people with "beyond reasonable doubt." Some will deny it till the day the die even if internal G emails show up, others may overreact even without a shred of suspicion. Then there's the issue of "did they do it to increase their profits or ...." That Google's earnings are increased if they favor major advertisers (which almost all e-commerce brands are) it's clear as day since Google is the largest advertising company by a wide margin. Now some may say that G would have promoted brands like they did these past 3-4 years anyway, and that Google has ethics or whatever. Uh, huh is my answer.