The whole point of search result rankings is to be non-neutral.<p>Of course there's a bias, towards useful and relevant results. A completely neutral search engine would be absolutely worthless.<p>Besides, don't people adhere to the caveat emptor philosophy anymore? If you disagree with the manner in which Google organizes their search results, you are free to choose another service, and in no way hindered in doing so.
A spectre is haunting America -- the spectre of <i>state Attorneys General running for office</i>.<p>Whenever I see a story like this Google investigation, my first question is: "What's this AG running for?" In this case, Texas AG Greg Abbott is running for reelection to a 3rd term. Often, though, they're running for Governor, Senator, or other statewide office.<p>Chris Tolles' piece on TC a couple weeks ago, "When Attorneys General Attack", is instructive as well:<p><a href="http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/19/when-attorneys-general-attack/" rel="nofollow">http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/19/when-attorneys-general-atta...</a>
I think a relevant complaint is when a company like Visual Website Optimizer has to compete against Google Website Optimzer when Google gets to place their link as the first AdWords ad. However, I use the word "complaint" instead of "case" because I have no idea whether there is a legal issue at hand.
There is no such thing as "search neutrality", good search is subjective, also the sites in question seem like spammy link farms, nothing I would miss in my search results.<p>And why is a Texas AG conducting this investigation? not Google nor any of the other companies involved are based in Texas.