I disagree with your disagreement. This internet is a dynamic and ever changing thing. 2002 is like the stone ages in this fast paced ever changing world. Google rewards the dinosaurs and sometimes ignores the fresh stuff. I know why they avoid the fresh stuff, because they think it might be spam. They need to resolve this fast.
Sometimes (not always) older content is more authoritative on certain topics. There are times where I want to find older webpages. Many times new sites are nothing more than cheap imitations of older more authoritative sites. Sometimes old sites are exactly that old and stale. This is why I also said I'd like to see an option where the user can change the weighting of sites/pages based on their age. For instance there could be an option that says "favor older sites/favor newer sites". This would allow the user to choose which to favor based on what they think will give them the best results for the search at hand. At the same time favoring sites on domains that have been registered for a long time and are registered for a long time into the future is one way of weeding out spam. Yes this can penalize new sites, but for those who are in the web publishing game for the long haul this won't matter in the big scheme of things. Although some people like to make the Internet evolve at a rapid pace, it is still a very prudent business move to take a long term perspective on web publishing. I've been doing this for well over ten years and I look at web publishing and building my sites on one, two and five year objectives. When I purchase a new domain, and begin a new site, I plan on it taking a year or two for it to start really bringing in a return on investment. I could really care less how it does in SERPs in the first few months because I'm planning so far ahead and am looking at bigger long term profits. If a web publisher is throwing a site up and hoping to rank well immediately, maybe they are in this business for the wrong reason or maybe they really are just trying to peddle MFA sites. When you start a new site be willing to pay your dues like those who came before you. In the long run you will make way more money than if you focus on the immediate future.
Will the general public change search engine if the results are not relevant? Google is much bigger than Altavista ever was, so could the same happen to Google that happened to Altavista. I don't think so. Do you?
I think it is possible. Not that Google would go under, but they could be humbled a bit. It depends more on if Yahoo, MSN and ASK act on this, and how fast they act. If I was yahoo, Id be spening millions on advertising right now - all types.
Authority can be given to domains not articles... I googled something about using Win x64, all I got were articles from it's beta days, around 2004, however if you went on those sites themselves and used their search you got updated articles saying how much Win x64 sucked and should be avoided
Its proven that anytime you give a consumer an option they will go with whatever gives them the most bang for their buck. In the case of search engines its the most information in the least ammount of time. If people struggle to find what they want on google they'll go to yahoo and try there. Soon enough they'll notice that google is wasting more time and giving less information than yahoo is in a shorter ammount of time and thats when they won't even bother to visit google which is what happend to altavista/msn/yahoo when google had the most relevence.