Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
There's a good debunking of the article here
A lot of this article is sour grapes.
The statement that Google Maps beat Mapquest because of preferential search treatment is hilarious. When google introduced the satellite view I recall reading (Wall street journal maybe?) that a mapquest executive had said he couldn't envision any need for the satellite view in a mapping service. (I just looked for the quote and couldn't find it. Too bad. Does this ring a bell with anyone? Bad as it sounded then, it sounds unbelievably idiotic now.) Mapquest just got beat by better technology.
You know what would be great? Nutrition neutrality. Screw search engines...that's just the tip of the iceberg. It's not fair that my triple cheeseburger makes me fatter than whatever skinny people are eating these days, so I want Congress to pass a law ensuring that every food tastes just as good and is just as healthy as every other food. With that and the law that makes Brad Pitt just as ugly as me and one more that makes Stephen Hawking just as dumb as me, I'm certain we'd all be happy.
The reason it's so important for net neutrality laws to prevent ISP's from filtering or throttling traffic is because they have such a stranglehold on the market, and that monopoly/cartel is mostly government-protected. There's no way to bypass your ISP except via proxy or by switching ISP's, and many people have neither the technical knowledge to do the first, nor the availability of the second option. If you don't like the way a particular search engine behaves, just don't use a search engine, or switch to another. Telecoms are almost as impervious to market swings as the government itself, whereas there are new search engines popping up every day. Take cuil for instance. Besides, how are they going to regulate different types of search engines, for instance Bing vs. Google vs. Wolfram Alpha. Each of these engines has a very different idea of what is "relevant", even if you strip away any manipulation done for ulterior motives.
Why would I want search nutrality? I don't want all search engines to return essentially the same results. I want Bing to return more Microsoft-centric results, and I want Google to return Google-centric results. I want community-oriented search engines to return community-centric results, and I want product-oriented search engines to return product-centric results.
When I want MSDN documentation, I want to go to Bing, search for javascript, and get the msdn javascript reference -- above the mozilla one.
You know, like when you want a science book, you went to a science book store. And when you wanted a book by a british author, you called a british book store.
It's all a part of considering the source -- in all senses of the words. I don't want everything to be the same.
is using his papers to bash his competitiors - welcom the the UK media where Murdocs papers regulualy run articles trashhing the oposition and plugging Sky. Private Eye a satirical mag even has a section dedecated to this.