And, you're right, the truthiness of the knowledge vault is the key.

though the "the vast store of facts that Google has pulled off the internet. Facts the web unanimously agrees on are considered a reasonable proxy for truth" seems less than reliable.

If "unanimously agrees" (really? They get unanimous agreement on more than 'the sun rises in the east'?) translates to tested/verified/sourced/peer reviewed then they might have something going for them. If it translates to "wikipedia", they can keep it.

That's the kind of test they should have.

I wouldn't expect anything to be unanimous. When anything can be posted, everything get disputed.

I'm not sure how they prevent the knowledge vault from being gamed by corporations saturating the internet with "selected" facts.

Since working to get sites to the top of rankings is a big part of what I do, I've been studying search engines since they first appeared. While links are one factor, Google has focused on relevance and quality of content for a long time, now. How they measure those things is a trade secret, but can be deduced by seeing what gets top rankings over the long-term.

This new ranking method will just become part of their overall method, just like all the others are.

For my end of the deal, since I deal with businesses that sell goods and services, the information on the pages I write is always accurate, so this won't matter to my clients. Many other factors do, though. It's an always-changing thing. So far, I and the web designer and SEO person I work with are doing remarkably well in figuring out how Google ranks websites. But that's a trade secret, too.

Bottom line: There are no tricks that get good rankings. Quality gets good rankings, however Google is measuring it.

If I recall correctly, a single point of anything is inherently subject to abuse. That was the hypothesis of Darpanet, that a single point can be attacked, so information was distributed widely, so that when one node was taken down, it didn't threaten any of the other nodes. It would certainly need a check and balance.

Anyway, Google's search results in the last 5 years or so have been quite poor, perhaps since 2005 or thereabouts. For example, search for "sexual shaming" and all that comes up on the first page is "slut shaming". I'm sorry Google, but "slut" was not the keyword I used, and "slut" is not precisely equivalent to "sexual", any established dictionary can prove this.

But Google isn't the government, yet. They are a private business and can make any decisions they please wrt truthiness.

But, when it's mother Google...