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The Need For Search Neutrality

Posted by samzenpus on from the fair-and-balanced dept.

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.'"

3 of 203 comments (clear)

  1. Google maps and preferential search treatment? by rmcd · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:Google maps and preferential search treatment? by Xeno+man · · Score: 5, Interesting

      You can say the same thing about street view. At first though there is no piratical use of other than that's kind of neat but Google is out there with a custom car and hardware mapping out the cities of the world. Google is the first and so far the only ones to do that and it's that type of attitude that made Google as successful as it is.

  2. Statism Masquerading as Net Neutrality by anglophobe_0 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.