

The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine [1998] - solipsist
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary;jsessionid=B550D74CC0D2715F882BC0DDA9330552?cid=6538

======
solipsist
I think that this paragraph from the appendix is the real gem:

    
    
      Currently, the predominant business model for commercial search engines is advertising.
      The goals of the advertising business model do not always correspond to providing quality
      search to users. For example, in our prototype search engine one of the top results for
      cellular phone is "The Effect of Cellular Phone Use Upon Driver Attention", a study which
      explains in great detail the distractions and risk associated with conversing on a cell
      phone while driving. This search result came up first because of its high importance as
      judged by the PageRank algorithm, an approximation of citation importance on the web [Page,
      98]. It is clear that a search engine which was taking money for showing cellular phone ads
      would have difficulty justifying the page that our system returned to its paying
      advertisers. For this type of reason and historical experience with other media [Ba2dikian
      831, we expect that advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the
      advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers.

~~~
janzer
Interestingly the top result for Cell Phone Use now is, "NTSB recommends full
ban on use of cell phones while driving - CNN"
[http://articles.cnn.com/2011-12-13/us/us_ntsb-cell-phone-
ban...](http://articles.cnn.com/2011-12-13/us/us_ntsb-cell-phone-ban_1_smart-
phones-texting-pickup-truck-driver) And appearing just below the ads for
T-mobile, Sprint and AT&T Cell plans. :)

------
arman
Never thought that this would make it to HN top news. Is there anyone who
haven't read this famous paper :P?

------
shingen
Search engines? Everybody knows the money is in portals and stickiness.

