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By saying "full-on regulation of their activities" do you suggest that it's some (which exactly?) government or committee is who would decide on search ranking

By saying "full-on regulation of their activities" do you suggest that it's some (which exactly?) government or committee is who would decide on search ranking algorithms and what shows up in the results and what doesn't? Or is it something else?

dreamcompiler 9y ago
I'm suggesting that, in an effort to ensure fairness of opportunity and no anticompetitive practices are taking place, governments might begin to see Google as the public utility monopoly that it has de facto become, and start treating it like one. Google might want to get out in front of this by being a bit more transparent and responsive to its users.
- drdaeman 9y ago
  I got it that you suggest the governments (all of them, authoritarian ones included?) to interfere by making some legislative decisions. But what exactly should the government(s) decide upon? Just saying that $company_name has to be "transparent" and "responsive" doesn't mean anything on its own. I was interested in how you suggest to achieve those feats (read: enforce them) So here's the problem I see: for the the accountability and transparency you suggest, to decide if Google (Bing, Yahoo, Yandex, Baidu, DDG... is it really a monopoly?) does things right or wrong governing bodies must invent some rules how search engines should work. Surely not a full set of algorithms (that would be an unprecedented disaster) but a set of constraints on those algorithm outputs. And it has to be an extensive ruleset. I'm sure it's not enough to require that e.g. a registered trademarks must be the first result on exact query, or that querying for Tiananmen Square gets no results. It has to decide for what happens on the intermediate positions, what has more priority and what's legally irrelevant and mustn't show up any high. I think that would be just bad - too many ways to abuse this system. I thought of also not writing any legislatures but doing some ad hoc rulings, when judges decide what's fair and what's not on the case-per-case basis (basically, civil vs common law), but I'm not sure if that would work any well. In such theoretical scenario I just foresee the insane amount "sue because my site is 5th result and I feel it's unfair to be anything less than 3rd place" cases. That would quickly escalate, judges would end up inventing some common criteria, and we're back to the abovementioned scenario, just sourced differently.

dreamcompiler 9y ago

I'm suggesting that, in an effort to ensure fairness of opportunity and no anticompetitive practices are taking place, governments might begin to see Google as the public utility monopoly that it has de facto become, and start treating it like one. Google might want to get out in front of this by being a bit more transparent and responsive to its users.

drdaeman 9y ago
I got it that you suggest the governments (all of them, authoritarian ones included?) to interfere by making some legislative decisions. But what exactly should the government(s) decide upon? Just saying that $company_name has to be "transparent" and "responsive" doesn't mean anything on its own. I was interested in how you suggest to achieve those feats (read: enforce them) So here's the problem I see: for the the accountability and transparency you suggest, to decide if Google (Bing, Yahoo, Yandex, Baidu, DDG... is it really a monopoly?) does things right or wrong governing bodies must invent some rules how search engines should work. Surely not a full set of algorithms (that would be an unprecedented disaster) but a set of constraints on those algorithm outputs. And it has to be an extensive ruleset. I'm sure it's not enough to require that e.g. a registered trademarks must be the first result on exact query, or that querying for Tiananmen Square gets no results. It has to decide for what happens on the intermediate positions, what has more priority and what's legally irrelevant and mustn't show up any high. I think that would be just bad - too many ways to abuse this system. I thought of also not writing any legislatures but doing some ad hoc rulings, when judges decide what's fair and what's not on the case-per-case basis (basically, civil vs common law), but I'm not sure if that would work any well. In such theoretical scenario I just foresee the insane amount "sue because my site is 5th result and I feel it's unfair to be anything less than 3rd place" cases. That would quickly escalate, judges would end up inventing some common criteria, and we're back to the abovementioned scenario, just sourced differently.