The Air You Breathe, the Water You Drink, the Google You Search ...

Is Google a public utility? Some Web sites that have accused Google of unfair placing are merely collections of links with next to no original content of their own, precisely the kind of sites that Google's search algorithm screens out to better answer queries....Still, the potential impact of Google's algorithm on the Internet economy is such that it is worth exploring ways to ensure that the editorial policy guiding Google's tweaks is solely intended to improve the quality of the results and not to help Google's other businesses. "If Google is to continue to be the main map to the information highway," the piece concludes, "it concerns us all that it leads us fairly to where we want to go." The assumption here is that Google effectively belongs to the public now.