> Another would be to give some government commission the power to look at those tweaks.

This is probably a good move. Why don't we give government regulators oversight of google, because as we've seen with the SEC and the Minerals Management Service, government regulation usually prevents fraudulent or dangerous business action.

The government has done good things - i'm lookin' at you, seatbelts and civil rights - but those were typically grass-roots movements and not blue-ribbon commissions.

I would way rather have google blindly manipulate their own search data for personal profit than have to deal with the likely outcome of governmental meddling in said data.