After adventurer Steve Fossett disappeared flying over the Nevada desert two months ago, Amazon.com joined the search party for his crash site by uploading satellite photographs covering 17,000 square miles. The idea was that volunteers on Amazon's Mechanical Turk service could pore over the photos and find Fossett's remains. But after 50,000 volunteers spent two months on the the effort to no avail, Amazon pulled the plug. Why?

The official Fossett search party has more faith in computer-aided image-scanning technology, Amazon told the Sydney Morning Herald. Algorithms 1, Calacanis 0. (Photo by Poldavo (Alex))