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

[McTim]

On Mon, Jan 4, 2010 at 3:33 AM, Parminder <parminder at itforchange.net> wrote:
<snip>
>
> McTim
>
> Treating everything, in this case a company's (self-declared) aim of
> organizing the world's information, as akin  to buying coke or  KFC chicken
> is behind many problems of the modern world. And since you have, in the
> past, declared your innocence regarding this socio-political term, I may say
> that this is more or less what neoliberalism means.
>

But I'm not treating "everything" like this, just a simple consumer
decision about which search engine to use.

> You may however know that all drug manufacturers, for instance, are obliged
> to disclose all ingredients of the drugs, whether it effects their
> competitiveness or not. This is because someone sensible decided that drugs
> are not the same as KFC chicken.

However, they ARE regulated (in the USA) by the same federal agency.
While it is true that drugs are not fast food, its not clear to me
that Google is more like drugs than fast food.


Media companies are obliged to clearly
> demarcate editorial content from advertisement, once again some policy
> makers were a bit nuanced, with public interest in mind. And you spoke about
> patents, as Lee points out, all patents are to be publicly available
> information. In fact patents were initially devised so that innovative ideas
> could be widely shared.

So if all patents are publicly available, and PageRank is patented,
then isnt the point of this thread moot?

>
> But coming back to the main point about Raff's article.
>
>>>And it is not an ordinary article - it is a NYT op-ed, and so if Google
>>> has something to say or refute it must issue a rejoinder.
>

there isn't a must involved, its up to them.  If they choose to let it
stand, they can certainly do that.

>> http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2009/12/meaning-of-open.html
>
> The link you forward does not address the principle point made by Raff's
> article. Relevant parts are posted again for your reference.
>
> "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."

http://www.google.com/search?q=bing+search&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

shows that this is not the case.

>
> Above is a clear allegation that without telling us "Google ... (is)
> promoting its own services at or near the top of its search results,
> bypassing the algorithms it uses to rank the services of others". I do not
> know whether they actually do so or not. But if they do not do so, by my
> reckoning, they will jump in with a strong rejoinder within hours of such an
> allegation being carried in a NY op-ed article. So, lets assume that they do
> so. Can anything be more anti-competitive than this.

yes, do this:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&hs=bMG&q=internet+search&aq=f&oq=&aqi=g-c2g3g-c3g1g-c1

and you will see not a single Google page in the first page.  It would
be anticompetitve if they manually gave themselves 1st place, but they
don't.

>
>>>Also there is definitely a connection between NN practices and allegations
>>> about Google, both being anti-competitive activities.
>
>>What connection is that?
> Cant see how you cannot make the connection. One of the worst NN violation
> consists in telco's promoting their own services on their network over that
> of their competitors. Google is doing the same at another level of the
> network that it controls.

Google provides services, these exist on webservers.  What providers
(telcos) want to do is to treat services/content from webserver A
differently than content/services from webserver B.

from http://www.savetheinternet.com/faq

"Net Neutrality is the guiding principle that preserves the free and
open Internet.

Net Neutrality simply means no discrimination. Net Neutrality prevents
Internet providers from blocking, speeding up or slowing down Web
content based on its source, ownership or destination.

Net Neutrality is the reason the Internet has driven economic
innovation, democratic participation and free speech online. It
protects the consumer's right to use any equipment, content,
application or service without interference from the network provider.
With Net Neutrality, the network's only job is to move data -- not to
choose which data to privilege with higher quality service."


>Isnt it the same level of offense?

not at all.  why is it an "offense" to provide the services that most
people want to use?

-- 
Cheers,

McTim
"A name indicates what we seek. An address indicates where it is. A
route indicates how we get there."  Jon Postel
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