jimmypop said:
Just go to Google, type in "Lance Armstrong", click "news", and look at the results. Because I claim to know a bit about how those results are formed, I'll also claim that they appear a bit managed, given the traffic and links we've seen over the past 14 days.
I wouldn't be at all surprised to hear that Google is managing search results, despite their many protestations to the contrary. I've noticed distinct signs of management in the past.
For instance, when the Abu Ghraib scandal (American soldiers torturing, raping, and killing Iraqi prisoners - and photographing it) broke a few years ago and the pictures (some of them) were released to the press, an image search turn up those pictures on any search engine other than Google. Google took 6-8 months to show the images, and even then only showed the most well known ones.
There are many other, less political examples as well, but that's the one that stands out in my mind. If there is money or political capital to be made, or some other advantage to Google, I believe they will be all about manipulation.
As stated, though, the room is dark and we don't know what all the factors are in their decision to manipulate these results. I hope this comes to the attention of some E.U. regulators.
EDIT: People who trust Google implicitly (most of the smug mugs around these parts in the tech biz, confidently carrying their Android devices), are naive and plainly uninformed.