A Closer Look at Google Adwords

zaphle writes "This article describes an interesting experiment with the Google Adwords service; in an effort to fine-tune the price per word, a mirror site was set up, paying a different price per word. I turns out the second site had to pay more in order to reach a similar click-through rate. My questions to the slashdot community: are organizations like Google redefining the law of demand and answer? To what extent does this imply a competitive advantage for larger companies? Do we need an ethical framework to direct companies to make such algorithms open source?"

Comments

Huh?

[antifoidulus]

Do we need an ethical framework to direct companies to make such algorithms open source?
Correct me if I'm mistaken, but I keep on hearing that "open source" is about freedom. Since when is forcing someone to behave in a certain manner considered "freedom"?
Google can do what google wants to do as long as it's within the limits of the law, you don't like it? Start your own damn company that is more ethical.

Re:Huh?

[commodoresloat]

Since when is forcing someone to behave in a certain manner considered "freedom"? Google can do what google wants to do as long as it's within the limits of the law

The law, of course, is about forcing someone to behave in a certain manner; there is always a tradeoff between the decrease in freedom in telling someone what to do and the payoff which may be an increase in freedom. The law restricts your freedom to lock me in a closet without my consent because that leads to a net increase in freedom for me and anyone else you might think about locking up.

Open source licenses like GPL are intended to force people to behave a certain way (decreasing someone's freedom) because its net benefit enhances everyone's freedom. Now, requiring open source in an industry by law is a little different than a license like the GPL -- it's debatable whether the increase in freedom is worth the cost in any particular situation; personally I would not be in favor of mandating open source across the board, though I probably would support mandating open source in public sector agencies for example. But it is overly simplistic to simply take the perspective that you do, that restricting people's behavior with regard to software development, or anything else, is automatically "anti-freedom."

Why they can get away with it

[hug_the_penguin]

Google IMO has the best advert service because it's unintrusive and they're ads you want to see because they're context sensitive. To me that makes it more likely you'll be interested in what the ad's selling and you'll want to get it more because the ad doesn't piss you off. Because of this, google can charge whatever they like and most people will pay it.