Google ranking for dummies

Not dummies who use Google, but dummy results.

I was talking with a good friend about my perplexity about JSTOR -- which can be summarized as, "Why firewall human knowledge?" He noted that many times when he's doing a search, JSTOR-protected material shows up high in the rankings of relevant information. He clicks, only to be frustrated.

He wondered whether it might not make sense for Google to adjust its algorithm. I.e., if an article is within a protected wall of intellectual property controls, should that limitation upon access not somehow "register," perhaps for example by lowering the ranking? Otherwise we are faced with the prospect of Google itself becoming less useful, more just an opaque dummy, as it pulls up and ranks more and more data that most people can't access.

Google is less than Google when it returns unavailable data.

It looks like I'll have an opportunity to learn more about JSTOR next week, and look forward to it.