[governance] 'search neutrality' to go with net neutrality

Tue Dec 29 14:44:58 EST 2009

Perhaps the most undesirable species of this type of "funnelling" work is not even so much in the matters of speech or thought control but in the closed cadre concepts brought out lately.  It is bad enough to point out the direction that we want thought to move in, but when we begin to say who is entitled to participate in open thought we are way down the road to wrong. 

The next step we see lingering around is "what type of thought does one engage in?" and should that thought pattern be allowed to participate, especially in a vote.  Googles search direction and our recent survey are in fact birds of a feather. Narten over at the GA says it is "herding kittens" as though he knows what direction the felines should move in.  I dare say that for most on this list the issue is a non-issue because they have the ability to discern the reason behind the question or infomation -- but how about for poor guys like me? Are we destined to absorb IT PC like a hog in slop?

--- On Tue, 12/29/09, Paul Lehto <lehto.paul at gmail.com> wrote:

From: Paul Lehto <lehto.paul at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [governance] 'search neutrality' to go with net neutrality
To: governance at lists.cpsr.org, "Parminder" <parminder at itforchange.net>
Date: Tuesday, December 29, 2009, 7:21 PM

Literally ANY system that seeks to more "efficiently" organize
knowledge or discussion, whether via search engines or structuring of
discussion or, for that matter, the design of surveys, must and does
make value choices along the way on behalf of other people. This
necessary "censorship" or structuring, no matter how innocent, is
unavoidable.  On top of that there is the temptation to go even
further down the road of streamlining and organization in the
perceived interests of user convenience, and then of course there's
intentional censorhip of that which is considered (using value
judgments) of low value, utility or accuracy or some combination
thereof.

By no means the only example, but an example nonetheless, is the good
faith efforts to design websites that structure or facilitate
dialogue. I'm interested in this topic myself, but I realize that in
seeking to moderate any discussion, I'm interfering with it on the
basis of value judgments of my own - which may range from streamlining
discussion to a discriminatory preference for my definition of "civil"
discussion or on-topic discussion.

Does this mean no one should attempt the above?  No.  But it does mean
that designers of speech-forums should be conscious of inevitable
biases, should disclose their negative effects, and should be aware so
that they don't go too far.  We shouldn't have to "catch" google or
anybody else restructuring our worlds of information without being
really up front about what they're doing and why.

Paul Lehto, Juris Doctor

On 12/28/09, Parminder <parminder at itforchange.net> wrote:
> 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.
>
> Parminder
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/28/opinion/28raff.html
>
>
>   Search, but You May Not Find
>
> By ADAM RAFF
> Published: December 27, 2009
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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?
>
> 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.
>
> /Adam Raff is a co-founder of Foundem, an Internet technology firm./
>
>
>

-- 
Paul R Lehto, J.D.
P.O. Box #1
Ishpeming, MI  49849
lehto.paul at gmail.com
906-204-4026
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