JCMC special issue on search engines

A critical socio-economic issue to examine is the impact on free speech of search engine advertising and editorial policies.

The episode discussed in the excerpt below from “Google’s Gag Order” was also covered by The Nation and Slate.

[SNIP]

…Far more important to American society, Google’s pervasiveness has given it a unique and privileged role as the information gatekeeper of the 21st century. “To Google” someone or something has become synonymous with using the Internet to find information, images or news. The New York Times has detailed the emergence of Google as an alternative to the traditional library for research. As individuals, businesses and publishers leverage its search, email and advertising tools to reach readers, sell products and assemble communities, Google is on the verge of becoming the Internet arbiter of the First Amendment.

As I learned this week, however, Google may be playing a darker, more sinister role in American society: corporate censor. On June 15, the Google Adwords team informed me that it had discontinued all advertisements placed by Perrspectives.com due to “unacceptable content” on the site that includes “language that advocates against an individual, group or organization.” As we’ll see below, this may or may not be blatant bias against liberal viewpoints. There can be no doubt, though, that the current Google editorial guidelines, evenly applied, would bar almost any newspaper, magazine, opinion journal, political party, advocacy campaign or even religious organization from advertising on its site. And that puts Google dangerously at odds with core American values of free speech and assembly…

[SNIP]

For the full story and a proposal for reform made to Google, see:

– “Google’s Gag Order: An Internet Giant Threatens Free Speech”

– “Do No Evil: A Google Freedom of Information Act”

I’m a kneejerk Google user (several times a day — even to check spelling when I’m too lazy to crack open a dictionary). I can’t see the need for a public alternative. Whose public? Even the BBC site which is funded by honest British TV owners uses Google. If I thought that Google UK were reflecting local political bias, I’d use Google.fr or Google.com, just like anyone else. As the internet doesn’t recognise borders, public funding sounds like a scam. The costs of searching are hardly socially exclusive: no search engine has refused a search because I’ve used a public machine (in the local library, say) and if Google or other search engine fails why should it be paid for by the public?

But my original point was — if Google’s near-monopoly is a worry, the problem is its grip on the browser market: my three favourite browsers — Safari, Firefox, and Opera — all have built-in google searches. While that’s the case, I have no need for other search engines.

Firefox does give you a choice of searches – there’s a pull-down next to the Gicon (can I trademark that one?) with Google/Yahoo/Dictionary.com/Creative Commons/Ebay/Amazon and an option to add more.

On-topic, I have some more to say about the question of a public alternative, but I’ll put that on my blog rather than choking up the thread with essays. Crucially, there is a problem of incentives here: search is a free good to the user, so the search engine has to make money through ads. Now, that implies an incentive to do anything to boost ad revenue.

But as the revenue isn’t from searchers – there is only a weak constraint on this. To get caught you’d have to rig the search process so comprehensively that enough users were driven away to render the advertising uneconomic. And that would require fairly serious, obvious fiddling absent a whistleblower. (In fact some users might prefer rigged search if they were after goods/services for sale)

Equally, the fact that search is free to users is deterrent to the idea of a public-sector search engine – why do we need a BBCSearch when Google is free?

And it will be difficult to design an open-source search engine because search isn’t a software-only service – there has to be a fuck-off big server farm somewhere. A peer-to-peer search engine would be the gold standard (but would raise privacy/security issues).

Alex, yes I know that Firefox offers alternative searches (Opera does too), but Google is the default: open a new tab, hit the tab key and search! I very rarely use the others unless Google disappoints, and I doubt anyone else does either.

Google does offer a rigged search: Froogle.

Last year crookedtimber had a post about search engine use, and I suggested that Google had too high a market share. And the commenters were all: “oh, no, only sophisticated people use Google. The great unwashed use whatever search button is in front of them.” Now, it seems, people are worried that Google is too influential because the masses have discovered it.

The masses discovered Google several years ago. And Google has a lower share of the US market than it did a year ago. However, I agree that we’d be better with more competition.

There must be some philosophical mileage that can be had from discussing search engines.

As in issue in ‘social epistemology’ or the epistemology of testimony search engines seem like an interesting case. Particularly when aggregating algorithms like that used by Google rely on the ‘opinion’ [in the relatively weak sense of hyperlinking] of many web-sites in the page-ranking process.

While Google might be the new arbitrator of free speech (a wild exaggeration, imho), its advertising policy is also being subjected to intense judicial scrutiny – see IP attorney
Ron Coleman’s blog on Google’s trademark issues.

So on the one hand, we’re pressuring Google to widen the scope of its advertising content, and on the other, Google is attacked by lawsuits that push it to tighten its control of the content and advertisers.

It’ll be interesting to see how Google reconciles these two pressures.