I don't look at it that way. My search engines (they don't all work as well/the same as Google) find all the information there is but there's a lot of information out there. If I am very strict and academic as to how I search or use a selective search engine made for the subject I am searching, there is no assumption there, it finds "less" because I am exact in my search. But if I search for "food" or just some multi-word string, do not use the search parameters like quotes and boolean logic and special characters, a successful search engine has to assume some sort of ranking, no matter what, and I'd rather it assumed a ranking based on my history of similar searches with that search engine than it's own idea of how I'd like it to search?

The search engine is not assuming what you are looking for, it is structuring the results based on what you have looked for; if I choose Mayo Clinic over WebMD (it use to give me WebMD up front as that is the most "popular") every time I search medical info, it is basing its rank order on one I have taught it! It starts quite neutral, gives the most popular search answers (why would you want the blanks, trash, and unpopular ones first?) and, over time, you teach that search engine how you like to search. Change to Yahoo or some other search engine and you get a different result because they don't care, don't have the technology to help you like Google and Amazon do, or you haven't used that search engine enough to mold it to your use as you have another engine.

Look at here, for example, when you search for a member? It just gives you all the members in alphabetical order under the first character of their name; you have to choose an additional step to search for a particular name or beginning of name to narrow down who you are looking for. That's why there's a "friend" option, so the people you talk to the most often, are easier to find. The search engine is not doing anything on its own! It is just letting you mold it to your use. All the stuff is still there and if you want something "different" you choose page 42 or something instead of reading page 1 is all. But for me, with Google, when I get beyond about page 5, it usually becomes pretty useless for anything I would want.

You realize the news Google finds for you and some of the searches are date sensitive too; it gives you the newest first? It isn't acting in the role of your mind, it is taking the drudgery out of searching, is merely sorting in ways you have asked it to sort before so most searches are easier.

If neither of us have searched for a subject before, it probably gives us the same most common/popular answers first as all search engines do/have to. It is only those subjects, like medical, for example, where I know you and I have searched for stuff before, that you and I are going to vary what it brings up on our first two pages. When I search for psychological things, it often brings up PsychCentral now :-) I find that mildly annoying at times but that's only 1 out of 25 or so first couple of pages; if I ignore the PsychCentral blog posts, they'll move down my pages and out of my way; it's just prioritizing, which any search engine has to do, that's their job; whether it's alphabetical, by date, by popularity, by whatever, they all have "rules" and I like the rules that Google and Amazon have where they pay attention to me in their sorting of my stuff! I don't want Amazon recommending mysteries or CD's or movies for me! I don't read, buy, or watch those things; I want my romances and fantasies coming up. No, not all the time but if I search for something specifically, only that comes up first and that's the same with Google.

Searching for "psychology websites" and "psychology websites psychcentral" is two different things and it is not the search engine that is controlling it but the nature of me and my search but see if you don't get "similar" results?