Stecken Google und Wikipedia unter einer Decke?

Diese Entwicklung habe ich selber schon beobachtet. Wikipedia stürmt die Top 10 von Google. Nahezu egal welchen Suchbegriff man eingibt, man landet fast immer bei Wikipedia. Und das obwohl bzw. gerade weil Google ein möglichst genaues Abbild der Realität im Index der Suchmaschine widerspiegeln möchte (ohne Manipulation der Reihenfolge der Treffer). Da die Bekanntheit von Wikipedia jedoch enorm zunimmt, steigt, neben den vielen Links evtl. auch durch die vielen Klicks auf die Wikipedia Treffer, das Ranking innerhalb des Index von Google enorm.

clipped from www.theglobeandmail.com Google's position is that its search results are as pure as possible, free from human intervention. The implication is that they're a reflection of reality, as found on the Internet. But by determining the order in which our queries are answered, Google actually interprets, recreates and reinforces reality millions of times a day. In fact, Google's only real competition for master manipulator of reality is Wikipedia. On paper, they're opposites -- Google locks everybody out of its reality-defining process, whereas Wikipedia's definition of reality is whatever its crowd of editors agrees on. In practice, though, the two are in cahoots. Wikipedia pages are steadily climbing the Google rankings for just about every imaginable search term. So reality as defined by mob rule is being promoted by reality as defined by the mysterious computer program. Fantastic.