micklearn - 7:42 am on Sep 17, 2011 (gmt 0)

I guess they missed this, but I think some of this is important, as well...

This business model resulted in an uproar, and OpenText has ceased to be a viable search engine. But less blatant bias are likely to be tolerated by the market. For example, a search engine could add a small factor to search results from "friendly" companies, and subtract a factor from results from competitors. This type of bias is very difficult to detect but could still have a significant effect on the market. Furthermore, advertising income often provides an incentive to provide poor quality search results.

[infolab.stanford.edu...]