As you know, over the last month Google has down-ranked sites that receive a high number of DMCA notices. This means your most popular torrent sites for illegal things probably don't show up at the top of the search results like they used to. http://torrentfreak.com/unknown-sites-dominate-google-pirate-search-results-141109/

Good! Great! What Google has done -- explicitly broke its own search and ranking mechanism to benefit 3rd parties -- has two obvious implications for everyone.

First, it means more sites that weren't famous will rise to the top. Other sites with the same content were in the search rankings before. Under the new formula, smaller sites benefit because they have less exposure and fewer takedown notices, so they'll rise in the rankings. This helps diversify and therefore stabilize the search market.

Second, it means we won't rely on Google to be good for web searches. People thought Google had a great algorithm. Maybe they did, but if they're publicly abandoning it to bow to the will of the RIAA and MPAA, they probably have already done so secretly in the past for other groups and will almost certainly do so more, both publicly and secretly, in the future. So you can't depend on them for a good search. You never could, really, but we conveniently ignored that. They're a good option as long as they aren't the only option.

Then there's the corollary for Google. Groveling to the RIAA and MPAA only makes Google look weak. Now every other company who could benefit by Google stacking the deck will be publicly whining and complaining and hand-wringing about how they're screwed and it's all Google's fault. And you know what -- it is Google's fault because now Google's in the business of picking winners and losers. They just did this with music and movies. Before, Google could pretend it was just neutral, and anyone who wanted a higher ranking should make a better website. Now it has proven to everyone it's not, but it wishes that weren't the case. The porn industry is already complaining about porn sites with unauthorized copying achieving high ranks. So are the German newspapers. Who's next?