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

Tue Dec 29 10:30:19 EET 2009

I was delighted to read Adam Raff's article. It's an area we at Connecting.nyc Inc. have been concerned about for some time. While Adam focused on corporate shenanigans, our concerns center on the impact the Google search engine's lack of transparency will have on civic (civil) affairs. For example, here in New York City we're likely to see Google confronting city zoning regulations seeking variances to build offices to house its expanding enterprises: how would Google rank the organizations leading the opposition? And imagine if Google "winner$" begin running for public office, how are we to trust its opaque algorithms during the rough and tumble of an election campaign? 

Transparent search is vital to our city's having level commercial and civic playing fields. We're looking for resources that foster the creation and assessment of  transparent search engines for the .nyc TLD. Pointers to relevant resources will be appreciated.

Tom Lowenhaupt 
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Parminder 
  To: 'governance at lists.cpsr.org' ; irp 
  Sent: Tuesday, December 29, 2009 12:32 AM
  Subject: [governance] 'search neutrality' to go with net neutrality

  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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