Toward a Public Alternative in Digital Archiving and Search

With inimitable clarity, Cory Doctorow made the case for an open alternative to Google in The Guardian earlier this month. He focused on the secrecy of search: [S]earch engines routinely disappear websites for violating unpublished, invisible rules. Many of these sites are spammers, link-farmers, malware sneezers and other gamers of the system. . . . The stakes for search-engine placement are so high that it’s inevitable that some people will try anything to get the right placement for