superclown2 - 3:13 pm on Nov 29, 2012 (gmt 0)

The obvious answer is they can't, no internet company has those kinds of resources

Google has the money to provide those resources.

So what we are talking about is the end of search

Google isn't a search engine any more. It's an advertising agency/knowledge centre.

It's too much information to expect any organization to be able to afford to monitor it non algorithmically. It has to be automated.

Search engines, including Google, have driven a coach and horses through copyright and privacy laws for years and so far got away with it but one day the laws will catch up with them. If algorythmic search results are ultimately doomed because of potential libel issues then, tough, they'll have to come up with something else.

If Google was a pure search engine producing unbiased results I would have some sympathy but they are not. The SERPs are just there to attact visitors to click on their ads, which greatly outnumber the search results on most pages and particularly above the fold. So, as a commercial organisation they have a duty of care to avoid causing damage to other people and since this guy had informed them of the problem they were causing him, and they did nothing about it, they just don't have a defence.