Google Oh Google

Google has in many ways the best of intentions and often does right by its users.  I value their leadership in so many respects. But their recent algorithm change has gotten some folks (myself included, and I believe Google themselves) into some murky waters.  While the precept of increasing quality should be a mandate for any self-respecting search engine, I believe the objective of picking winners and losers in terms of accuracy seems a little overreaching.  Will Google be the editor and reviewer of accuracy from now on?  We accept and appreciate that Google gives us search results that provide the most relevant links to what users are looking for.  They use a combination of algorithms and statistical tools to extrapolate what the user wants.  That is fine and good and what we love about them.  With this new change, they seem to think that "what users want" is someone else (namely Google) to tell them what is correct information.  If we are to live up to the premise of net neutrality and democratization, Google as the leader in the search space, cannot play favorites and pick winners.  Effectively this devalues user-generated content and places greater value to authoritative and editorialized content.  Their choice to pick eHow.com over Answerbag.com (both Demand Media sites) shows that they are more concerned about giving users "authoritative" information than user generated information - and yes, UGC is prone to be wrong and sometimes low quality.  But, is that what, we as search consumers, want? 

I understand that I am biased - I manage a Q&A site (askmehelpdesk.com) that has 99% user generated content and has and will continue to occasionally fail in terms of content quality.  But does it help a lot of users in a variety of topics (plumbing, relationships, taxes, cars & trucks, etc.).  Our experts and active members care about their fellow members and take the time and effort to give the best answer possible.  But yes, once in a while (I estimate < 20%) we have a "low quality" question with a "low quality" answer.  Heck - the site is a community site and some of the community members don't take the time to spell or grammar check.  In addition, there is a opinion and conjecture.  But that's what we do - we are not trying to be the encyclopedia.  And Google just dinged us in a bad way.  We think its unfair because we do not engage in plagiarism or any manner of content farming.  So I have to believe that our primary sin is enabling and fostering user content and trying to make money from Adsense.  This is fundamentally wrong and unfair to our community.  And on behalf of fellow Q&A sites and communities, I implore Google to do a better job and get itself out of the correctness game!!

And, oh dear Google, you might want to fix this - See the 5th result on this page....you can try:
http://www.google.com/search?q=turbotax+login&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a