And so it begins. Google Co-op is humanity's last stand against the hegemony of the machines. But it's also the first step toward enslaving humans for the Good of the Network.

It works like so: Sometimes humans can pick ideal search results for each other better than Google's algorithms can. Google Co-op lets people select the best pages for certain topics. But where is it headed? Marketwatch journalist Bambi Francisco reports from Google Press Day:

When I asked Google CEO Eric Schmidt what was the most exciting product launch in the last year, he said "Google Co-op." In his words: "It's a powerful idea" because it gets people to help Google structure the data. Through a co-op, "user-generated data becomes part of the answer," Schmidt said.

The answer. The solution. The final solution.

And is it any wonder that the first Google result for [Google co-op] is Google's Pigeonrank page?

But it gets scarier:

"Machine algorithms aren't good at [arcane searches]," Alan Eustace, senior vice president of engineering at Google, said to me. Great," I said. "Humans 1, machines 0."

Eustace gave me a little smile, with a look that said, but it won't be for long.

"For the time being, the human judgment is still much better," he said.

Just keep in mind, why can't Google employees say "human" without an article in front of it? "The human" this, "your human" that. This is how it starts, humans. This is how it starts.

Google machines vs. humans [Bambi Francisco]

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