As much as I love “El Reg”, people have known for some time (years) that Google employs people to check results and adjust accordingly and this seems like a re-hash of that news.
I agree Google needs serious competition though, but who and how. Whatever it is needs to do a better PR job than Cuil, and less ad-conscious that MSN and Yahoo IMO. With the commercial cynicism around, it’s gotta be two kids in a bedroom again surely 