July 15, 2010

The search engines should scramble and shuffle their algorithms so as to guarantee diversity of results

Sir Marissa Mayer is absolutely correct in that we should “not neutralize the web’s endless search” July 15, because that could mean doing to knowledge, what regulators did to finance when they imposed on the banks the credit risk information oligopoly of the credit rating agencies.

But since Mayer represents a company which we have the right to at least suspect for wanting to sometimes go even further and create a monopoly, we should require more search diversity within every single search engine. The web should open our minds to an endless world of possibilities, and not close it by providing us some findings predetermined by others.

One alternative would be to list hundreds of search criteria, in a much expanded sort of “advanced search option” and then let the individual searcher decide how he wants to look for what he is after. (The one I personally most miss is the one that allows me to find hits between two dates.)

If the individual search option is not used then the search engines should be forced to shuffle and scramble their algorithms, so as to guarantee that no two searches provide exactly the same results, unless of course there are only a very limited number of results.