The purpose of search engines is filtering content to give you what you want
The purpose of search engines is filtering content to give us what we asked for. Unless they developed mind-reading technology, Google doesn't really know what I want and attempts at guessing it will lead to substandard results.
*-- Wikipedia, for example, is built around an ideal of giving people an objective survey of different things.
A website where any amount of divergent opinions get edited down to a single article on the subject (target of edit wars and well-known editorial biases) is hardly "an objective survey of different things."
The purpose of search engines is filtering content to give us what we asked for. Unless they developed mind-reading technology, Google doesn't really know what I want and attempts at guessing it will lead to substandard results.
I think you really hit the crux of the issue here. My opinion is, these search engines are built around the UI paradigm of "type something into the box and go find that thing." The user doesn't have one box for finding discussion forums, one box for finding blogs that have people they agree with, one box for finding material that appeared in print publications, etc, and yet search engines are for finding all these things, if you want them.
As long as there's people typing "climate change" into Google, Google has to guess at what they are asking for because there ain't enough bits in the query to tell it. There's no a priori reason to expect that they are asking for the most informative and accurate links covering a wide variety of perspectives on climate change; many people probably aren't.
Regarding Wikipedia, well, that's why I said it was the ideal. You're never going to crowdsource perfect objectivity and truth from a million biased writers with ulterior motives, but they try, and they do an OK job on many topics.
The purpose of search engines is filtering content to give you what you want. I think this is fairly noncontroversial.
What is controversial is whether "what I asked for" is a better approximation of that, or whether "what Google's model of me indicates I really want" is a better approximation.
I can't say which one wins for you, right now; but it's clear that this hinges on the accuracy of the model--which is one reason privacy and usability are at odds.
The purpose of search engines is filtering content to give us what we asked for. Unless they developed mind-reading technology, Google doesn't really know what I want and attempts at guessing it will lead to substandard results.
*-- Wikipedia, for example, is built around an ideal of giving people an objective survey of different things.
A website where any amount of divergent opinions get edited down to a single article on the subject (target of edit wars and well-known editorial biases) is hardly "an objective survey of different things."