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The Need For Search Neutrality
wilsone8 writes "The New York Times includes an op-ed today arguing for Search Neutrality: 'Today, search engines like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft's new Bing have become the Internet's gatekeepers, and the crucial role they play in directing users to Web sites means they are now as essential a component of its infrastructure as the physical network itself. The F.C.C. needs to look beyond network neutrality and include search neutrality: the principle that search engines should have no editorial policies other than that their results be comprehensive, impartial and based solely on relevance.'"
Inability to explain why. Credibility of your article nullified. Samzenpus is trolling.
Google, a company based in America, has an autocomplete-style guessing algorithm which showed "Michelle Obama monkey" as the first choice when one typed in "michelle". It was so fair that they had to alter their own results and provide a disclaimer for the sake of political correctness. Apparently that wasn't even the first time they'd dealt with that situation. I'd say Google is fair until assholes like article author started bitching and moaning.
Try teaming up with Metacrawler, they are many times as powerful as google.
Yeah, Toyota also borrowed the wheel from somebody. It's only a matter of time until they're sued in the East district of Texas.
I dunno, will you tell me exactly why you feel you've been shortchanged by Google?
...the mouthpiece for the State clamoring for MORE State control.
Shocking.
Let's go ahead and regulate the living crap out of everything online... that's sure to do wonders for innovation.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
The principle that search engines should have no editorial policies other than that their results be comprehensive, impartial and based solely on relevance.
The definition of comprehensive depends on the computational resources of the provider.
The definition of impartiality depends on the morality of the observer.
The definition of relevance depends on entirely subjective criteron.
You can't legislate these things. They're intangible. And besides, Google (and many other search engines) rely on the ability to edit their results to defeat attempts to game the algorithms they use. Legislation that limits that would ironically worsen the very attribute it is attempting to improve! It would allow search engine spammers free reign. The solution here is not to regulate... If a search engine sucks, it'll be replaced by a vendor that offers an alternative that sucks less. But if you must legislate, I would take a minimalist approach -- only regulate that which is proven harmful.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
...talking about "comprehensive, impartial and based solely on relevance."?
Barf.
Encarta, possibly the most successful commercial digital encyclopedia of all time is based on the old Funk and Wagnalls encyclopedia which unfortunately was subpar to Brittanica and World Book by miles.
Microsoft took that shoddy encyclopedia, added content, added media, added hyperlinks, and turned the paper volumes into the best digital encyclopedia you could (at that time) buy.
But facts are facts. You can't really alter the information of an encyclopedia without someone calling you on it. In the same way, search engines categorize and comb through volumes of information and return data as best it can. Sometimes that data is useless (spam), but other times it is very pertinent (vanity searches).
If Google or Bing can't restrict what is shown in their search results, the value of the search tool is reduced. As we have seen in recent years, Google's search results are getting worse and worse, being flooded by spammers and expertsexchange links that include a couple of search terms but either have nothing to do with the search or require registration to access.
Leave the right to determine what they will return to the search providers. Guarantee that the tool remains useful by allowing them to cull the results responsibly.
... and in exchange, they deserve that we regulate the fuck out of them to just sell us the bits.
Google's search is a free service with multiple competitors and negligible customer lock-in. See the difference?
If "relevance" is a requirement, then the government will have to produce a definition of "relevance." Wow, I love this idea. Instead of allowing the advancement of technology, we have to conform to a government definition, and if we rank our search results contrary to that definition, our search engine is ILLEGAL. And I'm sure the government won't abuse their ability to declare certain results orderings to be illegal.
Stay the hell away from my search engines. If I'm not happy with the one I'm using, I'll switch to another.
What are the options?
1. His site just never had enough incoming links to raise it in the rankings.
2. His site employed tricks to artificially raise its ranking and was penalized for this.
3. Google marked down his site for other reasons (competitive?)
Really, what is the most likely answer? For yet another price comparison website?
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Infrastructure is a natural monopoly. Broadcast spectrum even more so.
The FCC's original mandate was to govern allocation of broadcast spectrum; the naturally monopolistic tendencies of wired infrastructure (the need for eminent domain to build it, mostly) provides a reasonable justification for extending its purview to that as well.
But search engines are not natural monopolies. Anyone can come along, do it better than the other guys, and run off with their lunch money, so to speak. Just like Google did to all the search engines that they put out of business or pushed to the sidelines when they debuted. Sure, overturning a very popular brand like Google in the minds of users will be difficult, but that's mostly because Google is good enough for most people; if it sucked, people would be happy to try something new, and if a competitor search engine can't even carve out a little niche for itself to compete in, it obviously has nothing of significant benefit to offer.
And unlike the inevitable Microsoft comparison, switching away from Google to another search engine costs the users absolutely nothing, compared to not only the cost of acquiring an alternative operating system, but of learning it and changing over almost all of your apps which depend on it. If switching from Windows to Linux or OSX or BSD or what have you were as cheap and easy as switching from Google to Yahoo or vice versa, I suspect MS wouldn't have nearly the stranglehold it has on the operating system market.
Point being, there's absolutely no need to regulate search engines, because this is about one of the clearest examples of where the free market can handle itself best.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
Google is a private company that lives and dies on the whims of the market. If they are incompetent and start to screw up their index, who knows it may happen, then people will leave. Geez, imagine if everything somebody didn't like had to be regulated? There is no law against being successful, well there shouldn't be unless you think like a loser. And furthermore, once you start regulating more than is absolutely necessary by "committee" you introduce inefficiencies into our wonderful free market system. Which may not be perfect but it gives us such an advantage that it would be stupid to throw it away over sour-grapes.
Shh.
"Today, news media like New York Times, Fox News, CNN have become the news gatekeepers, and the crucial role they play in dictating what news is prominently visible to the people means they are now an essential component of the society. The F.C.C. needs to look beyond freedom of the press (freedom to publish your own newspaper) and include news neutrality: the principle that news media should have no editorial policies other than that their results be comprehensive, impartial and based solely on relevance."
I don't think it will happen in my lifetime though.
Oliver.
I am surprised everyone seems so against this idea.
I do not know about anyone else but i do not go about trying addresses in the address bar and hoping to get a relevant site. if it does not show up on the first page of google chances are I will never visit the web page.
But, from what I have seen google does not seen to do much censoring, so i am not really worried at this point.
and I would consider it important not to be censored from any part of the internet.
Not that they should not edit out the people that try to artificially raise their relevant lvl, but web pages should not be filtered because some religions/ethnic group has a problem with the material.
Not that we necessarily need laws and the government to regulate it, if their are enough people around that consider it important hopefully their will always be censor free searches around.
While the article might contain some parts that sound like they come from someone upset that their business failed and are just blaming google because it is easy to do so, I believe the fundamental idea of search neutrality is something to want.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
He probably broke Google's rules by doing shady SEO tricks and his site just isn't that popular. Why would people want to search for other search engines, anyhow? I want to find actual results, not endless pages filled with "searches" that lead to other searches but never have actual results.
Anyhow, although I agree with net neutrality (because we *can't* easily change ISPs, due to their natural monopoly), this "search neutrality" is utter crap. I can change search engines on a whim. But *I don't want to.* If I don't like the way Google does things, I will drop them. It won't be the first time, either. I used to use Altavista, back when it was the most comprehensive. I still remember, and would use, other search engines, but thanks to Google... I just don't need to.
If you want to get people to visit your site, make it something people want. Don't just whine if the search engines ignore you. You don't have any natural right to a certain ranking on search results (no matter how important it is to your bottom line), and I have to think that this would be an incredibly stupid thing to regulate.
Of course, politicians like regulating things they have no business regulating. *sigh*
If Google screws around, there are always rival search engines that would give you the content you are looking for.
The real danger is that the Government might tell Google and other search engines to filter out what the Government considers to be "dangerous information", "State Secrets", or other nonsense.
Basically, we are talking Search Censorship.
EFF and others should lobby hard against *any* government interference into how online services conduct their service. We can decide for ourselves if the Search Engines are being fair, and if not, we can launch new search engines and watch the big ones loose market share.
KEEP THE INTERNET FREE.
Ruby Neural Evolution of Augmenting Topologies
The New York Times has also struggled with getting people to pay for their shit, and right now is part of an effort to bring pressure against Google anyway it can.
I'm sure that Google will innovate/improve to keep that from happening, but it's not as if I don't have a choice between any search provider. OTOH -- I set that in my browser. Having the ISP (I'm looking at you, Charter) hijaack the NXDOMAIN to go to their own engine is causing me serious heartburn (especially since I'm trying to *telnet* to a valhalla.private address!
the US health care system. We need *less* regulation...
Google is sued right and left for whatever reasons. Publishing companies lobby governments to have google pay for the "right" to make them visible. Of course, this only works well if Google is taken the power to retaliate by removing certain sites from their results at will. So search neutrality generally sounds good, but who benefits most from it?