This. While humanity has uploaded a lot of valuable, worthwhile information online in the past decade, that's just a blip compared to the amount of totally useless junk online. That makes things harder for all search engines. It also will be interesting to see how search engines cope with the internet as the number of websites/pages continues to grow in the next fifty or so years.
The respondent felt that the original post contained the answer to its own question. Therefore, the respondent said, "This," pointing to the answer.
Shouldn't it then be "that", or have the quote come after "this"?
In a way I cope with that problem by searching for "keyword + name of site that I trust". For example "cross domain javascript fade quirksmode". It works better that way, but it assumes that you already know the names of major "solution providers."
I thought this is what PageRank was supposed to determine algorithmically. I don't trust two out of three of your listed trusted websites, so this would devalue their service to me. Then again, they probably don't care much what I think, since I switched search engines months ago.
Oh, wait. The more searches they do, the more impressions they see. The more impressions they see, the more likely they are to click on an ad. More ad clicks, more money.
Hypothesis: Price, efficiency, benefits to the consumer all oscillate over the years, never to converge, as competition naturally enter and exit the field.