Head G-man Eric Schmidt stood before the publishers yesterday and sang a chorus of "?" He also noted that Google tries to skew its news search toward more "credible brands." If so, they got a long way to go before they get it right.

There are scores -- heck, hundreds -- of blogs that do original reporting and/or add insightful (or, ahem, snarky) commentary to existing stories. Then there are the other 100 million blogs. Unfortunately, thanks to Google's inscrutable search algorithms, a crappy blog on a well-trafficked site will almost always outpoll a well-researched, thoughtfully composed report on a site the Google Gods deem less worthy, no matter who got there first.

The folks who do the hard work of reporting and editing news stories should get the biggest piece of the pie, while the copycats fight over who gets to lick the plate. That's pretty obvious. What's not obvious is how to go about making this happen.

No amount of chest thumping by the self-righteous Bloggerati will fix that. But I understand the geeks over at Google are pretty smart. Maybe they can figure it out. Toss a few of the Google billions toward solving that problem, Eric, and the news industry might stop comparing you and your friends to tapeworms.

Are newspapers obsolete? Should Google just buy the AP and be done with it? E-mail me: .