> No one (yes, yes, I'm sure like 3 people) want a list of all results, unordered or ordered by something useless like name
That's not what the author was suggesting (or indeed, what they built). They were trying to untangle the positive feedback bias showing up first in the rankings gives.
I think there's probably a lot more to untangle, but as a first pass it's super cool!
It's the feigned surprise and sort of attitude that google is doing something malicious or it's a subterfuge. Starting with a bolded "Google Maps Is Not a Directory. It’s a Market Maker." and inishing with eg
> the most important result isn’t which neighbourhood tops the rankings - it’s the realisation that platforms now quietly structure survival in everyday urban markets.
For any service like this, _of course_ ranking is at the core of it. A more honest article could have started there, eg "since you can't display all results, and doing so is useless to everyone, the heart of these products is their ranking algorithm and choices. Let's examine Google's."
A tone of breathless wonder is now the coin of the realm. Quality research and interesting analysis gets the same treatment as everything else, because that's what gets clicks and responses. Dinging an individual article for this is arbitrary and capricious.
Don't hate the player, hate the game. I hate the game too, fwiw.
Still a lie though. If you don't know / aren't familiar with a ranker, the author is priming you through the entire article to believe google is doing something wrong or malicious by ranking the results. Rather than the same thing search engines have been doing for 30 years. Whether their ranker is good or bad (and for whom) is separate.
Including, of course, the way many popular chain restaurants got there is they make food a lot of people like.
That's not what the author was suggesting (or indeed, what they built). They were trying to untangle the positive feedback bias showing up first in the rankings gives.
I think there's probably a lot more to untangle, but as a first pass it's super cool!