Greg Linden quotes Chris Anderson: “Amazon and Google … have built their brands on the power of their filters … Google’s search algorithms [and] Amazon’s recommendations … are nothing more than the wisdom of the crowds, the statistically measured opinions of millions of … people. That’s why we trust them.”
Greg adds: “Systems like Amazon’s recommendations and Google’s PageRank implicitly share the wisdom of the crowds. Collaborative filtering-based systems like Amazon’s recommendations use algorithms to find people with similar interests and share their wisdom. Google’s PageRank algorithm mines the link graph — links people made between web pages — to surface authoritative and useful sources of information…Implicit systems like Amazon’s and Google’s surface the wisdom of the crowds anonymously, quietly, and with no effort from users.”
