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

[Fearghas McKay]

On 5 Jan 2010, at 14:45, Ginger Paque wrote:

> Should a user have to search the fine print to find the information  
> they want?

Whatever regulation is done - a user will have to do that at some point.

Educating the user needs to be done even if there is regulation  
because they will need to understand what the regulation covers.

Personally my take on the original article is that the search rankings  
were correct, they had no valid new / original content, just a  
collection of links. The links might have been ordered or edited  
specially but they were moving me one step or more further away from  
the information that I would be looking for. The cynical might say it  
was sour grapes on the writer's part, I would put it down to a  
misunderstanding of what I as a user want :-)

The other thing that seems to be missing from this debate is that we  
are not Google's customers, we are users and we can use something else  
if we choose to, probably because the search doesn't work well enough  
for us. Whilst I am sure that Google could repurpose their  
infrastructure into something else and continue as an entity if a  
better algorithm comes along from an upstart, the market is still wide  
open for a better engine to be as disruptive as they were. It will  
probably not come from the USA, the newer emerging markets will bring  
their own giants of the network world.

	f


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