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

Tue Dec 29 18:33:03 EET 2009

There is no X, Y, and Z corporations. There is simple one company.

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http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/20091209/hitwise-nov-search-stats/

The Digital Daily Feed

November Search Stats: Google?s Not the Competition, It?s the
Environment in Which You Compete

by John Paczkowski
Posted on December 9, 2009 at 12:07 PM PT

November search metrics are beginning to roll in and they?re pretty
much what you?d expect. According to Experian Hitwise, Google?s
(GOOG) share of the U.S. search market rose 1.4 percent in November
from a month earlier to 71.6 percent. Meanwhile, Yahoo?s (YHOO)
share fell 4.6 percent to 15.4 percent and Microsoft?s (MSFT) Bing
slid 2.4 percent to 9.3 percent (see table below; click to enlarge).

ComScore data on the search market are widely considered the
industry standard and therefore more closely watched by Wall Street.
Still, the big picture is clear: Google is not the competition, it?s
the environment in which you compete. The IT industry used to say
that about IBM (IBM), but today, the adage seems equally applicable
to Google, which dominates the sear

On Dec 29, 2009, at 11:19 AM, Lee W McKnight wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I agree with McTim and Lauren that this is really about undermining  
> the Google-inspired net neutrality actions now being considered by  
> the FCC.
>
> I agree with Raff and Michael that the dominance of one firm,  
> growing daily, is a matter for public policy concern. You can do a  
> search to figure out which company I?m thinking of ; )
>
> And I agree with anyone who thinks both net and search neutrality  
> per se is nonsense.
>
> Here?s my Internet/political weather forecast: lots more obfuscation  
> from all parties, for years to come.
>
> Until people figure out the right word is open - including open to a  
> wide variety of non-neutral content and services.
>
> Lee
>
>
> ________________________________________
> From: irp-bounces at lists.internetrightsandprinciples.org [irp-bounces at lists.internetrightsandprinciples.org 
> ] On Behalf Of Michael Gurstein [gurstein at gmail.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, December 29, 2009 10:03 AM
> To: governance at lists.cpsr.org; 'McTim'; 'Parminder'
> Cc: 'irp'
> Subject: Re: [IRP] [governance] 'search neutrality' to go with net  
> neutrality
>
> McTim and all,
>
> I have immense respect for Lauren Weinstein and particularly his  
> work with the Privacy Forum and I have no expert knowledge in the  
> underlying argument either of the original article by Raff or the  
> article pointed to in Weinstein's piece but clearly Weinstein has  
> misread the Raff article (or I've missed something important...
>
> The Raff article is pointing to some significant risks from the  
> dominance of one company (Google) as the primary interface with the  
> world wide web of knowledge/information... Surely a significant  
> (potential) issue in itself...
>
> The rather (what seems to me) tenuous links of the Raff article to  
> the anti-NN argument are hardly sufficient to dismiss the basic  
> question that Raff is asking about the need for a policy/regulatory  
> assessment of the significance of Google's market dominance in this  
> core area of Internet development and value.
>
> M
> -----Original Message-----
> From: McTim [mailto:dogwallah at gmail.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, December 29, 2009 6:41 AM
> To: governance at lists.cpsr.org; Parminder
> Cc: irp
> Subject: Re: [governance] 'search neutrality' to go with net  
> neutrality
>
> see below for a different perspective, one which I agree with for  
> the most part:
>
>                "Search Neutrality" and Propaganda Deluxe"
>               http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000658.html
>
> --
> Cheers,
>
> McTim
> "A name indicates what we seek. An address indicates where it is. A  
> route indicates how we get there."  Jon Postel
> On Tue, Dec 29, 2009 at 12:32 AM, Parminder  
> <parminder at itforchange.net<mailto: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.
>
>
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