Posted on 07/13/2010 4:29:11 PM PDT by george76
Google has become the main advocate in Washington for a set of regulations to prevent internet service providers favouring particular companies’ traffic.
However, that campaign, over what is known as “net neutrality”, has handed a gift to its own detractors.
This year, “search neutrality” has become the rallying cry of activists who believe that Google has too much power to decide which internet sites are granted the attention that comes with a high search ranking, and which are consigned to outer darkness.
After regulating the “pipes” of the internet with net neutrality, says Frank Pasquale, a professor at Seton Hall law school, “we need to look at the next part of the bottleneck, and that means search”.
For now, Google’s algorithm reigns supreme. But it is still too early to tell if it will be a permanent fixture.
(Excerpt) Read more at ft.com ...
Yeah this could bite Google in the behind alright. People will be demanding to be able to configure their searches to use whatever kinds of priorities they want, rather than Google’s painfully hand-tuned system. Then they will complain when doing this gets them results crammed with boatloads of web spammers. All of this can surely be addressed, but oh the headache for Google.
Since people pay to be high on Google’s result list, this would put a serious crimp in their revenue stream.
Just to be fair, I’d like a search that says “who just paid to be high on Google’s results list?” So I can boycott them at my pleasure.
I had the task of attending a “Google programming department — employees only” meeting once. Not sure why they let me stay, I’m not an employee, or even a contractor.
Everything they say about Google is true — the employee food is insanely good, and their ethics toward internet users is sinfully corrupt.
It burns me that Google is still not sophisticated enough to deal with purposely targeted mixed-case search terms. Case folding seems to be fundamental to how they internally order their English-language data, yet they seem to encounter no grief with exotic alphabets.
Don't believe me? Try going to images.google.com, remove the strict filter under advanced image options and search for anything that you think might bring up under age pornography.
This crap resides on their servers. Every executive at Google could be arrested and would loose any case brought against them. What is the minum for explicit pictures of children? They are toast if any country prosecutes them.
Yahoo and Microsoft are apparently collaborating and will come out with a new search in the next month or two. Google’s days on top might be numbered. Combine that with a prosecuter going after them on underage or kiddie porn. Their stock could be in the tank in a month.
As long as the patented PageRank keeps the average amateur web surfer fat, dumb, and happy, Google will go nowhere. As for kiddie porn, the thrust will probably fail at the USSC; no mechanized search can practically be free of that or any other verboten item.
People will be demanding to be able to configure their searches to use whatever kinds of priorities they want, rather than Google’s painfully hand-tuned system.Be careful what you wish for. It ain't about the Chinese, GOOGLE or YAHOO.
The Real "net-neutrality" from Obama's FCC is for Obama and other Commies at FCC to have the "painfully hand-tuned system"...Otherwise known as censorship if not a simple internet (book burning) kill switch.
Google enjoys the same kind of exemption as does a “common carrier.” They don’t arrest, for example, your mailman if you mail order kiddie porn, or the guy who runs your telephone line if you ask your minor niece to talk dirty to you on the horn. It would be good if Google had a complaint system to get rid of such items (they really don’t need to be facilitating pervs). They already do for alleged copyright violations.
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