The “Dan Rather” example that you gave does present an interesting problem. For many people, what other people say about them, their company or organization will carry more weight simply because of thier site size, number of in and out links, etc. How do you fight or neutralize something like this? In most cases it is a losing battle.

The search engine battle field is certainly hotting up. This means chasing an ever increasing learning curve.

Nice to hear that MSN is taking the approach of an open search API for value add. They need a pat on the back.