Just for fun, imagine an alternate reality where nobody cracked the problem of an effective automated indexing algorithm. Hand-curated directories emerge, some structured by taxonomic categorization, others using keyword tagging, still others reliant on user-based rankings. The most successful grow in popularity and consolidate, becoming highly lucrative properties with recognizable brand names. As they grow to gargantuan size, research in the field explodes and innovators race to come up with improved methods to connect people to content they seek. Sergey Dewey and Larry Linnaeus make a breakthrough they call SageRank. Instead of computer code, it leverages "social algorithms" and game theory to incentivize participant behavior. Vladmir Bezos sinks billions into a clandestine effort to game the system. Once the story breaks, public backlash rallies into a worldwide, anti-"fake links" campaign. In one little corner of the internet, some schmuck says, "Imagine an alternate reality where two nerds came up with an impartial computer program to crawl the whole web..."
