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<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial>I was delighted to read Adam Raff's article. It's
an area we at Connecting.nyc Inc. have been concerned about for some time. While
Adam focused on corporate shenanigans, our concerns center on the impact
the Google search engine's lack of transparency will have on civic (civil)
affairs. For example, here in New York City we're likely to see Google
confronting city zoning regulations seeking variances to build offices
to house its expanding enterprises: how would Google rank the organizations
leading the opposition? And imagine if Google "winner$" begin
running for public office, how are we to trust its opaque
algorithms during the rough and tumble of an election campaign? </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial>Transparent search is vital to our city's
having level commercial and civic playing fields. We're looking for
resources that foster the creation and assessment of transparent
search engines for the .nyc TLD. </FONT><FONT size=2
face=Arial>Pointers to relevant resources will be appreciated.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial>Tom Lowenhaupt</FONT> </DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE
style="BORDER-LEFT: #000000 2px solid; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message ----- </DIV>
<DIV
style="FONT: 10pt arial; BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; font-color: black"><B>From:</B>
<A title=parminder@itforchange.net
href="mailto:parminder@itforchange.net">Parminder</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>To:</B> <A title=governance@lists.cpsr.org
href="mailto:'governance@lists.cpsr.org'">'governance@lists.cpsr.org'</A> ; <A
title=Irp@lists.internetrightsandprinciples.org
href="mailto:Irp@lists.internetrightsandprinciples.org">irp</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Sent:</B> Tuesday, December 29, 2009 12:32
AM</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Subject:</B> [governance] 'search neutrality'
to go with net neutrality</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV><FONT face="Times New Roman, Times, serif">See below an
interesting article on how the company that seeks to 'organise the world's
knowledge' really may be doing it. It is time we called for complete
disclosure in public interest of search logics of Google and other search
engine, which truly are now a (the?) principal source of information and
knowledge globally. Also a point to ponder for those who think everything,
including controlling excesses of market power, can be done bottom-up and may
not need policy regimes. <BR><BR>Parminder<BR><BR><A
class=moz-txt-link-freetext
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/28/opinion/28raff.html">http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/28/opinion/28raff.html</A>
<BR><BR></FONT>
<H1><SMALL><SMALL>Search, but You May Not Find
</SMALL></SMALL></H1><NYT_BYLINE type=" " version="1.0"></NYT_BYLINE>
<DIV class=byline>By ADAM RAFF</DIV>
<DIV class=timestamp>Published: December 27, 2009 </DIV>
<P>AS we become increasingly dependent on the Internet, we need to be
increasingly concerned about how it is regulated. The Federal Communications
Commission has proposed “network neutrality” rules, which would prohibit
Internet service providers from discriminating against or charging premiums
for certain services or applications on the Web. The commission is correct
that ensuring equal access to the infrastructure of the Internet is vital, but
it errs in directing its regulations only at service providers like AT&T
and Comcast. </P>
<P>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.</P>
<P>The need for search neutrality is particularly pressing because so much
market power lies in the hands of one company: Google. With 71 percent of the
United States search market (and 90 percent in Britain), Google’s dominance of
both search and search advertising gives it overwhelming control. Google’s
revenues exceeded $21 billion last year, but this pales next to the hundreds
of billions of dollars of other companies’ revenues that Google controls
indirectly through its search results and sponsored links.</P>
<P>One way that Google exploits this control is by imposing covert “penalties”
that can strike legitimate and useful Web sites, removing them entirely from
its search results or placing them so far down the rankings that they will in
all likelihood never be found. For three years, my company’s vertical search
and price-comparison site, Foundem, was effectively “disappeared” from the
Internet in this way. </P>
<P>Another way that Google exploits its control is through preferential
placement. With the introduction in 2007 of what it calls “universal search,”
Google began promoting its own services at or near the top of its search
results, bypassing the algorithms it uses to rank the services of others.
Google now favors its own price-comparison results for product queries, its
own map results for geographic queries, its own news results for topical
queries, and its own YouTube results for video queries. And Google’s stated
plans for universal search make it clear that this is only the beginning.</P>
<P>Because of its domination of the global search market and ability to
penalize competitors while placing its own services at the top of its search
results, Google has a virtually unassailable competitive advantage. And Google
can deploy this advantage well beyond the confines of search to any service it
chooses. Wherever it does so, incumbents are toppled, new entrants are
suppressed and innovation is imperiled.</P>
<P>Google’s treatment of Foundem stifled our growth and constrained the
development of our innovative search technology. The preferential placement of
Google Maps helped it unseat MapQuest from its position as America’s leading
online mapping service virtually overnight. The share price of TomTom, a maker
of navigation systems, has fallen by some 40 percent in the weeks since the
announcement of Google’s free turn-by-turn satellite navigation service. And
RightMove, Britain’s leading real-estate portal, lost 10 percent of its market
value this month on the mere rumor that Google planned a real-estate search
service here. </P>
<P>Without search neutrality rules to constrain Google’s competitive
advantage, we may be heading toward a bleakly uniform world of Google
Everything — Google Travel, Google Finance, Google Insurance, Google Real
Estate, Google Telecoms and, of course, Google Books. </P>
<P>Some will argue that Google is itself so innovative that we needn’t worry.
But the company isn’t as innovative as it is regularly given credit for.
Google Maps, Google Earth, Google Groups, Google Docs, Google Analytics,
Android and many other Google products are all based on technology that Google
has acquired rather than invented. </P>
<P>Even AdWords and AdSense, the phenomenally efficient economic engines
behind Google’s meteoric success, are essentially borrowed inventions: Google
acquired AdSense by purchasing Applied Semantics in 2003; and AdWords, though
developed by Google, is used under license from its inventors, Overture.</P>
<P>Google was quick to recognize the threat to openness and innovation posed
by the market power of Internet service providers, and has long been a leading
proponent of net neutrality. But it now faces a difficult choice. Will it
embrace search neutrality as the logical extension to net neutrality that
truly protects equal access to the Internet? Or will it try to argue that
discriminatory market power is somehow dangerous in the hands of a cable or
telecommunications company but harmless in the hands of an overwhelmingly
dominant search engine?</P>
<P>The F.C.C. is now inviting public comment on its proposed network
neutrality rules, so there is still time to persuade the commission to expand
the scope of the regulations. In particular, it should ensure that the
principles of transparency and nondiscrimination apply to search engines as
well as to service providers. The alternative is an Internet in which
innovation can be squashed at will by an all-powerful search engine.
</P><NYT_AUTHOR_ID></NYT_AUTHOR_ID>
<DIV id=authorId>
<P><I>Adam Raff is a co-founder of Foundem, an Internet technology firm.</I>
</P></DIV><NYT_UPDATE_BOTTOM></NYT_UPDATE_BOTTOM><BR>
<P>
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