Nick writes:
> they introduced Google to the world, they warned that if the search engine were ever to leave the “academic realm” and become a business, it would inevitably be corrupted. It would become “a black art” and “be advertising oriented.”
This is verbatim from the original paper:
> Aside from tremendous growth, the Web has also become increasingly commercial over time. In 1993, 1.5% of Web servers were on .com domains. This number grew to over 60% in 1997. At the same time, search engines have migrated from the academic domain to the commercial. Up until now most search engine development has gone on at companies with little publication of technical details. This causes search engine technology to remain largely a black art and to be advertising oriented (see Appendix A in the full version). With Google, we have a strong goal to push more development and understanding into the academic realm.
The meaning is not even close to what Nick suggests!