[kingofmen]

It appears to me that comrade LeGuin is being rather willfully ignorant here. The detailed implementation of the algorithm is not public, but the basic concept - download every webpage, index by keywords, rank by number of links - is well known and had been well known for some time even in 2010. LeGuin could have, well, googled it. But then she wouldn't have gotten an anti-capitalist essay out of her ignorance.

[rexpop]

You libertarian free market types sure hate it when consumers express preferences for—let alone make demands of—our vendors.

Let the invisible hand decide if "provenance" is a differentiator, and lay off the slurs.