Search Engines and the Will to Truth
http://english.ttu.edu/kairos/6.1/binder.html?features/dillon/enginesendtidy.html
  peer-reviewed

Dillon, George
Kairos
2001

Abstract:

Thousands, probably millions of writers are putting up pages of information or speculation on the Web. They are choosing to bypass the whole apparatus of referees, editors, reviewers, catalogers, and indexers to make a direct appeal to 'the world' on the Web. If the cost of Web publication were that the pages remained un-indexed, few would choose it, for it would amount to being one drop in a sea of 1.5 billion pages: the chance of anyone with an interest in the topic finding the page would be infinitesimal. But along with all this unauthorized, uncatalogued writing has come the development of fast and powerful search engines, some of them indexing over one billion pages. And suddenly 'to look something up' means 'to run it by Yahoo!' It is easy to make a case against the Web search engines, and from that a case against the Web itself as a medium, or even a tool, for making and exchanging public knowledge. But...