I was consoling a friend yesterday who is an expert in online and database searching. "Everyone wants to hear about Google" he said "my job is becoming all Google all the time" I paraphrase, but we all know how it is. I've become increasingly leery of Google lately as they form more and more partnerships with fee-based publishers and vendors and also index their sites for Google's master index. Can anyone explain to me why a Google search for jessamyn ineligible academy [backstory] nets me five results, one of which is a PDF, with no accompanying "show as HTML" link, and flavortext that is from the article itself [or its abstract] that is not available via the linked site except through a subscription? I'm sure there's an obvious explanation -- like maybe the article was online for free and now it's not -- but why no HTML link, and where did that text come from if it's not in the linked page? I sent Google a note and trolled their FAQ for details, but all I can deterrmine is that, according to the current FAQ, Google isn't supposed to do that. I'd love to hear some reasons why it does.

Note from a reader, apparently Google Scholar may crawl full text, and show the abstract in the results, even if it only allows access to a citation. Is it too much to ask that Google have a way to avoid these fee-based results, or mark them somehow? I know how to remove PDFs from my search results, but not how to remove all non-full test sources. Even my library can do that. Then again, they're not trying to make money off of their search results.