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Thanks Narine. Very Interesting article!<br>
<br>
In the non digital business world such levels of vertical integration
(a very inadequate term in the present regard) would have called in
considerable competition enforcing measures. However, in the
essentially global digital industrial space, absence of global
political devices to do the needful is clear. The only potent
jurisdiction of US governance systems of course prioritizes the global
financial and other gains for the US over enforcing competition and
other public interest laws on the US based global digital industry, a
clear instance of an acute 'political failure' (like, market failure)
for the global society.<br>
<br>
Nonetheless, we all are increasingly subject to US laws. Laws of a
country that distinguished itself in its political history with the
slogan 'no taxation without representation' which can also be read as
'no legislation without representation'. <br>
<blockquote>Previous privacy missteps by both Google and Facebook
resulted in both
companies entering into settlements with the U.S. Federal Trade
Commission. The FTC agreements require Google and Facebook to submit to
external audits of their privacy practices every other year.<br>
</blockquote>
These determinants of much of our online life - the contours of our
knowledge (google) and the structure of our social relationships
(facebook) do follow US diktats in their global operations, but hardly
of any other political jurisdiction.<br>
<br>
We are facing an increasingly acute case of 'digital colonialism', and
one keeps hoping that the global civil society, or at least the
Southern civil society takes note of it and comes up with appropriate
responses.<br>
<br>
Parminder<br>
<br>
On Thursday 12 January 2012 02:33 AM, Narine Khachatryan wrote:
<blockquote
cite="mid:CAPVtaunbVbcsdExWt0HLj9VK344q3wr0w0E2XXLLwajazm99ZA@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">
<div class="gmail_quote">
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Dear all, </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Yesterday’s
article in Huffington Post ‘Google
'Search Plus Your World' Brings Google+ Into Search Results’ is for
your information.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/10/google-search-plus-your-world_n_1196565.html"
target="_blank"><span lang="EN-US">http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/10/google-search-plus-your-world_n_1196565.html</span></a><span
lang="EN-US"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p>
<p
style="border-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 8px; padding: 0px; list-style-type: none; line-height: 18px; font-size: 13px; font-family: Arial,'Helvetica Neue',Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
<br>
</p>
<p
style="border-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 8px; padding: 0px; list-style-type: none; line-height: 18px; font-size: 13px; font-family: Arial,'Helvetica Neue',Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">SAN
FRANCISCO -- Google is sifting through the photos and commentary on its
blossoming social network so its Internet search results can include
more personal information.</p>
<p
style="border-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 8px; padding: 0px; list-style-type: none; line-height: 18px; font-size: 13px; font-family: Arial,'Helvetica Neue',Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The
additional personal touches that began to roll out Tuesday mark another
step toward one of Google's most ambitious goals. The Internet search
leader eventually hopes to know enough about each of its users so it
can tailor its results to fit the unique interests of each person
looking for something.</p>
<p
style="border-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 8px; padding: 0px; list-style-type: none; line-height: 18px; font-size: 13px; font-family: Arial,'Helvetica Neue',Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
Different people should start seeing different search results more
frequently now that Google Inc. is importing content from its
6-month-old Plus service, a product that the company introduced in an
attempt to counter the popularity of Facebook's online hangout and
Twitter's short-messaging hub. Google's main search results page also
will start highlighting more content from an older online photo service
called Picasa.</p>
<p
style="border-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 8px; padding: 0px; list-style-type: none; line-height: 18px; font-size: 13px; font-family: Arial,'Helvetica Neue',Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
Other features will recommend additional people and companies to follow
on Plus, based on their search requests. Those suggestions will exclude
publicly accessible information about accounts on Facebook and Twitter.</p>
<p
style="border-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 8px; padding: 0px; list-style-type: none; line-height: 18px; font-size: 13px; font-family: Arial,'Helvetica Neue',Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The
preferential treatment for Plus might amplify concerns about the
objectivity of Google's search results _a focal point of broad
regulatory investigations in the U.S. and Europe.</p>
<p
style="border-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 8px; padding: 0px; list-style-type: none; line-height: 18px; font-size: 13px; font-family: Arial,'Helvetica Neue',Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The
Federal Trade Commission, attorneys general in six states, and the
European Commission are looking into complaints alleging Google has
been unfairly exploiting its dominance in Internet search to promote
its other services while ignoring or downplaying pertinent information
about its rivals.</p>
<p
style="border-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 8px; padding: 0px; list-style-type: none; line-height: 18px; font-size: 13px; font-family: Arial,'Helvetica Neue',Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
The exclusive Plus recommendations in Google's search results are
"exactly the kind of thing that the antitrust people are screaming
about," said Danny Sullivan, an industry expert who has been following
Google since the 1990s and is now editor of SearchEngineLand.com. "This
is very un-Google like. It's unfair to other services and it's unfair
to people."</p>
<p
style="border-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 8px; padding: 0px; list-style-type: none; line-height: 18px; font-size: 13px; font-family: Arial,'Helvetica Neue',Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
Sullivan's criticism is especially striking because he has generally
defended other search features that highlight Google's own services.</p>
<p
style="border-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 8px; padding: 0px; list-style-type: none; line-height: 18px; font-size: 13px; font-family: Arial,'Helvetica Neue',Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Twitter
said it's worried the added emphasis on Plus in Google's search results
will make it more difficult to find breaking news and other compelling
information shared within the 250 million messages, or tweets, posted
on its service each day.</p>
<p
style="border-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 8px; padding: 0px; list-style-type: none; line-height: 18px; font-size: 13px; font-family: Arial,'Helvetica Neue',Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
"We think that's bad for people, publishers, news organizations and
Twitter users," Twitter said in a statement.</p>
<p
style="border-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 8px; padding: 0px; list-style-type: none; line-height: 18px; font-size: 13px; font-family: Arial,'Helvetica Neue',Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Facebook
didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.</p>
<p
style="border-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 8px; padding: 0px; list-style-type: none; line-height: 18px; font-size: 13px; font-family: Arial,'Helvetica Neue',Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Google
says its efforts to reel in more information from other sharing
services are frequently thwarted by the providers. For instance,
Twitter puts explicit instructions in its computer computing telling
Google not to index the material, according to Google.</p>
<p
style="border-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 8px; padding: 0px; list-style-type: none; line-height: 18px; font-size: 13px; font-family: Arial,'Helvetica Neue',Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
"Ushering in the new era of social and private data search will take
close cooperation, and we hope other sites participate so we can
provide the best possible experience for our users," Google said in a
statement issued after it was asked about its added emphasis on Plus in
its search results.</p>
<p
style="border-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 8px; padding: 0px; list-style-type: none; line-height: 18px; font-size: 13px; font-family: Arial,'Helvetica Neue',Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
Facebook and Twitter pose a threat to Google because they don't allow
Google's search engine to log most of the photos, links and
observations cascading through those services. That's troublesome to
Google because its search engine could become less useful if its system
can't analyze what people are signaling is important to them so those
preferences can be factored into the results.</p>
<p
style="border-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 8px; padding: 0px; list-style-type: none; line-height: 18px; font-size: 13px; font-family: Arial,'Helvetica Neue',Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
Twitter once gave Google better access to the tweets flowing through
its service as part of a 2009 licensing agreement, but that deal
expired last summer. Microsoft Corp.'s Bing search engine is still
paying to mine into Twitter's service.</p>
<p
style="border-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 8px; padding: 0px; list-style-type: none; line-height: 18px; font-size: 13px; font-family: Arial,'Helvetica Neue',Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
Facebook has long cooperated with Bing, partly because Microsoft bought
a 1.6 percent stake in the company in 2007. At the same time, Facebook
has steadfastly resisted Google's attempts to peer deeper into its
social network.</p>
<p
style="border-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 8px; padding: 0px; list-style-type: none; line-height: 18px; font-size: 13px; font-family: Arial,'Helvetica Neue',Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
That's one of the reasons Google started Plus, which is now hatching
"Search, plus Your World."</p>
<p
style="border-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 8px; padding: 0px; list-style-type: none; line-height: 18px; font-size: 13px; font-family: Arial,'Helvetica Neue',Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The
feature will be automatically turned on for all English-language
searches made by users logged into Google. Turning off the personal
results permanently will require changing a setting in Google's
personal preferences. The personal results can also be excluded on a
search-by-search basis by clicking on an icon of the globe on the
results page (the personal results will be denoted by a button
featuring a human's silhouette).</p>
<p
style="border-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 8px; padding: 0px; list-style-type: none; line-height: 18px; font-size: 13px; font-family: Arial,'Helvetica Neue',Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
If the new formula works as Google expects, the search results will
include pertinent information culled from the requestor's Plus account.
For instance, a query about the San Francisco 49ers might include links
and comments made about the football team by other people in one of the
social circles on the user's Plus account. A search request that
includes the name of a dog owned by the user or a friend might turn up
photos of the pet that have been posted on Plus and Picasa.</p>
<p
style="border-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 8px; padding: 0px; list-style-type: none; line-height: 18px; font-size: 13px; font-family: Arial,'Helvetica Neue',Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
"This is going to open up a whole new avenue in search," said Ben
Gomes, a Google fellow.</p>
<p
style="border-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 8px; padding: 0px; list-style-type: none; line-height: 18px; font-size: 13px; font-family: Arial,'Helvetica Neue',Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Google
isn't the first to do this. Bing has been mining some of the
preferences and other information shared on Facebook since May. But
Google's emphasis on more personal results figures to attract more
attention because its search engine is so dominant. It handles about
two-thirds of the Internet search requests made in the U.S. while Bing
processes less than one-third, including the activity that it comes
through a partnership with Yahoo Inc.</p>
<p
style="border-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 8px; padding: 0px; list-style-type: none; line-height: 18px; font-size: 13px; font-family: Arial,'Helvetica Neue',Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
Facebook, though, has greater insights into personal tastes. That's
because its nearly 8-year-old social network boasts more than 800
million users who share more than 1.5 billion photos alone each week.
In October, Google said Plus had more than 40 million users. Google
hasn't updated the information since then, although some external
studies have estimated Plus began the new year with 60 million to 70
million users.</p>
<p
style="border-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 8px; padding: 0px; list-style-type: none; line-height: 18px; font-size: 13px; font-family: Arial,'Helvetica Neue',Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
The search changes Some of Google's changes may help prod more people
into joining Plus.</p>
<p
style="border-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 8px; padding: 0px; list-style-type: none; line-height: 18px; font-size: 13px; font-family: Arial,'Helvetica Neue',Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">As
part of Tuesday's expansion, the profile pictures of Plus
accountholders will appear in the drop-down suggestions on Google's
search box. So when typing in "Mary," you may see those named Mary in
your circle along with those Google believes you'd find interesting.</p>
<p
style="border-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 8px; padding: 0px; list-style-type: none; line-height: 18px; font-size: 13px; font-family: Arial,'Helvetica Neue',Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
Searches on general topics such as "music" and "sports," will generate
suggestions on people and companies that have Plus accounts. Sullivan
considers this be unfair because some people might not have Plus
accounts, or share more interesting information on their Twitter page.</p>
<p
style="border-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 8px; padding: 0px; list-style-type: none; line-height: 18px; font-size: 13px; font-family: Arial,'Helvetica Neue',Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
While Google is hoping the addition of more personal results will make
its search engine even more useful, the changes also could spook some
people as they realize how much information is being compiled about
them. Google tried to minimize privacy concerns by recently switching
to technology that encrypts all its search results to protect the
information from slipping out.</p>
<p
style="border-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 8px; padding: 0px; list-style-type: none; line-height: 18px; font-size: 13px; font-family: Arial,'Helvetica Neue',Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
Previous privacy missteps by both Google and Facebook resulted in both
companies entering into settlements with the U.S. Federal Trade
Commission. The FTC agreements require Google and Facebook to submit to
external audits of their privacy practices every other year.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="color: rgb(102, 102, 102); font-family: 'comic sans ms',sans-serif; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 25px;">Nariné</span><span
style="color: rgb(102, 102, 102); font-family: 'comic sans ms',sans-serif;"> Khachatryan</span></p>
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