links for 2010-08-23

The tech press endlessly diverts itself with commentary about Google’s standing vis-a-vis Facebook, Google’s stock price, Google’s legal predicament vis-a-vis Oracle, and so forth — standard corporate who’s-up-who’s-down stuff. But this is different; this is consequential for all of us.

I was a fairly early endorser of Google back in 1998, when the company was a wee babe of a startup. Larry Page impatiently explained to me how PageRank worked, and I sang its deserved praises in my Salon column. For over a decade Google built its glittering empire on this simple reliability: It would always return the best links. You could count on it. You could even click on “I’m feeling lucky.”