diberry - 3:46 pm on Dec 1, 2012 (gmt 0)

This just confirms something I've been suspecting: Google sees themselves as a curator of information now. In the past, they just presented us with the info and let us sort out the good from the bad.

But the current Congress has made it clear they think Google has a public responsibility to sort the info for us. They don't understand what them algo thangs is, so in their ignorance they expect the SERPs to resemble an expert human review of the entire web. And hey, that's an interesting notion, but it's so not Google's business model.

So Google kind of has to move in this direction whether they like it or not. And to avoid hiring expensive experts on medicine to review the SERPs, I think they'll just cherry pick sites associated with top medical research/governance. That way if someone claims Google misled them about a medication (and medication lawsuits are HUGE business in the US), Google can just say, "Hey, it wasn't us - it was these guys."