7 ms·

Cory Doctorow: Search is too important to leave to one company – even Google

23 points by rms 17y ago

swombat 17y ago
I'm not entirely convinced that a public body would be better at determining what should be visible than a private company. Both have their pros and cons. Private companies will tend to look at what's best for their users in order to maximise profits. Public bodies will tend to look at what's appropriate politically. Considering how corrupt most political bodies are (see all the various lobbying efforts and other expenses scandals) and considering the importance of search, I'm not sure that a public body can be entrusted with it. It's too important to screw it up in the way that governments tend to.
- madair 17y ago
  Wow, wow, and wow. So you're saying better to trust a private interest than a public one, due to scandal & corruption? Okay, I'm trying to do justice to this with a response, but it's just going to fall into a trap, probably a libertarian one, but I'm not really sure, perhaps just a childish one. I do need to leave a comment though, even one not very information filled, at least to cover the gap and give people pause and think about what you just said and all hopefully they will think of all its implications, until someone with more time fills in the gap or this article just fades away and the comment with it. I hope, swombat, that you just haven't thought about all the implications of what you're saying, so at least you're just uneducated, and not evil.
  - swombat 17y ago
    Typing a 3-paragraph comment to finish with an empty ad-hominem is very lame. I'm saying that I'm not convinced that putting a public body in charge of search would be any better than the current situation. I don't trust either of them. I know what Google wants - they want us to continue using them and they want us to click on adverts. And I think they're smart enough to realise that if they mess too much with search results in an unethical way, people will get pissed off and go elsewhere. A government body could have any number of varied and colourful motivations. They might want to pander to the latest anti-whatever craze and ban all related results. They might abuse their power for political purposes (far worse than commercial abuse imho). Importantly, they might mandate that everything has to go through them. With search engines being private, I at least have the choice to go elsewhere. If you make this a public, government affair, they might pass laws requiring you to use their search engine, or other equally asinine things. Google at least is under no illusion that the only way it can convince people to use it is to provide the best results.
    - madair 17y ago
      A typical set of fears of regulation. At least you clarify that you really meant what you said. The people who think the market will self-regulate remain convinced even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, for instance the current banking and mortgage crisis.
      - ryanwaggoner 17y ago
        Actually, the case has been made that the current economic crisis is a good example of the consequences of too much government involvement. I'm not sure I agree, but the fact is that both sides are using this crisis as an example to backup their ideological viewpoints, and there's evidence on both sides. The truth is complex. To characterize one side as just sticking their head in the sand reveals your own bias.
    - madair 17y ago
      It's more profitable for Google to self-censor in China. So they do.
      - spot 17y ago
        self-censorship is "Self-censorship is the act of censoring ... without an authority directly pressuring one to do so" (quoting the wikipedia). needless to say, this is not the case of google in china.
        madair 17y ago
        Self-censor, or be blocked. They self-censored.
        spot 17y ago
        does "or be blocked" sound like direct pressure to you?
        17y ago
- Confusion 17y ago
  Private companies try to maximize profits, but that doesn't necessarily mean they do what's best for their users. Fast-food stores encouraging people to eat there often are a good example. Apple refusing certain apps is another one: it's not in my advantage, nor in that of most of my peers, that they limit my choice. Furthermore, not everything can be left to companies. Public utilities like the police and water are supplied/regulated by the government for all the usual reasons. Knowledge is also a public utility. We cannot leave the protection of free speech to companies, or other groups of citizens: they would inevitably suppress certain bits of knowledge from becoming publicly known. Isn't the knowledge of 'where to find what' exactly that kind of knowledge? A near monopoly on search results grants a company great power. In a possible near future, wouldn't it be in Google's best interests to suppress the information of where to find competitors? Not blatantly of course, but when done is subtle ways, will anyone notice? Will anyone believe those who cry wolf? And how devastating it would be to the competition!
  - anamax 17y ago
    > Public utilities like the police and water Lots of places get water from private suppliers. And, you might notice a lot of private security. They don't have extraordinary arrest powers, but .... > We cannot leave the protection of free speech to companies, or other groups of citizens: they would inevitably suppress certain bits of knowledge from becoming publicly known. How does a private entity suppress what I want to say? (They may refuse to pay me to say something, refuse to help me say something, or refuse to say something themselves, but that's no suppression.)
    - Confusion 17y ago
      Governments must force companies to publish all kinds of information about their practices, such as a yearly financial report. Without that obligation, that information would never be made public, because the company would force individuals that wanted to publish the data to keep their mouth shut (that follows from the fact that many companies do their best to get an exemption from publishing all kinds of data). Free speech includes the freedom to publish information that has been decided to be 'public information'.
- calambrac 17y ago
  This is Cory Doctorow, I doubt very much that he means 'government' when he says 'public'.
duien 17y ago
I find it very interesting that in every forum where I've read comments on this article (here, BoingBoing, and Guardian) most people's first assumption is that when Cory says 'public' he means 'government'. Government is never mentioned in the article and the main parallel he draws is Wikipedia, which seems to indicate that by 'public' he means open source. I'm not sure how well an open source philosophy could be applied to search. Most successful open source projects that I can think of are things that you download and run your own copy of, whereas search has to be centralized, to some extent. And centralized means resources -- Google has a huge number of datacenters all over the world and stores many petabytes of data. How could an open source project do something like that? It's an interesting problem to contemplate, but I think the solution would be very difficult.
- tjic 17y ago
  Cory is a self proclaimed socialist. I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that when he says "public" he means government, just as if a right wing politician said "faith based", it would be a good guess that he meant Christian or Jewish, and not Buddhism.
  - graemep 17y ago
    Id you read what he says, the phrase is "public process", which does not suggest something run by the government. He then goes on to draw parallels with Wikipedia, which is also not run by the government. Reading the rest of it, what he has in mind is clearly something open source and distributed, as far from centralised government control as you can get.
  - bmj 17y ago
    Still, based on the article, it's pretty clear he is looking at Wikipedia, or open source in general, rather than the State. Could we build such a thing? It'd be as unlikely as a noncommercial, volunteer-written encyclopedia. It would require vast resources. But it would have one gigantic advantage over the proprietary search engines: rather than relying on weak "security through obscurity" to fight spammers, creeps and parasites, such a system could exploit the powerful principles of peer review that are the gold standard in all other areas of information security. Peer review is a critical element in open source software, and less so in governance (though, theoretically, it is supposed to be).
TweedHeads 17y ago
Search is important but much more important is being able to switch search engines at will and without pain. Today you can do that with google, yahoo, ask, etc. So, one company offering the best search service is no threat at all, and competition is always good. As long as Google offers the best service I'll be using them happily.
- euroclydon 17y ago
  Doesn't somebody need to use yahoo, msn, etc lest we risk being left with only google?
  - zimbabwe 17y ago
    Isn't Microsoft trying? It's not like Google exists in a vacuum here. How do you fix the problem? Force Google to break up into separate companies for each search field so their service gets worse? Or do we force other people to use the other services against their will?
- zimbabwe 17y ago
  I agree with Doctorow that a monopoly is dangerous. But Doctorow doesn't like the idea of a virtual monopoly, either - the sort that a company gets when they're popular for any number of reasons despite having lots of competitors. But then, Doctorow has never quite been a bright bulb, he's just been a loud man with a blog. So it helps to take what he writes with a grain of salt.
hyperbovine 17y ago
I don't see why everyone is so worried. Before there was Google, there was Alta Vista. Before there was Alta Vista, there was Yahoo. This aura of infallibility surrounding Google ignores the historical fact that the reigning king of search has been dethroned at least twice before. People who cry foul at Google's dominance are tacitly stating that the quest for innovative ideas in search and related fields is over. Forever. I have a hard time believing that.
- jdrock 17y ago
  A good point to remember, but Google has done and continues to do much more than these companies. Its current financial position puts it in a much more defendable fortress than these past companies. The amount of money Google has put into streamlining its operations are, in my opinion, is its real competitive advantage. Google can crawl and analyze the web faster than pretty much anyone (my company is trying to make this is un-true ;) ), which creates a significant barrier to entry.

23 points by rms 17y ago

I'm not entirely convinced that a public body would be better at determining what should be visible than a private company. Both have their pros and cons. Private companies will tend to look at what's best for their users in order to maximise profits. Public bodies will tend to look at what's appropriate politically. Considering how corrupt most political bodies are (see all the various lobbying efforts and other expenses scandals) and considering the importance of search, I'm not sure that a public body can be entrusted with it. It's too important to screw it up in the way that governments tend to.

madair 17y ago
Wow, wow, and wow. So you're saying better to trust a private interest than a public one, due to scandal & corruption? Okay, I'm trying to do justice to this with a response, but it's just going to fall into a trap, probably a libertarian one, but I'm not really sure, perhaps just a childish one. I do need to leave a comment though, even one not very information filled, at least to cover the gap and give people pause and think about what you just said and all hopefully they will think of all its implications, until someone with more time fills in the gap or this article just fades away and the comment with it. I hope, swombat, that you just haven't thought about all the implications of what you're saying, so at least you're just uneducated, and not evil.
- swombat 17y ago
  Typing a 3-paragraph comment to finish with an empty ad-hominem is very lame. I'm saying that I'm not convinced that putting a public body in charge of search would be any better than the current situation. I don't trust either of them. I know what Google wants - they want us to continue using them and they want us to click on adverts. And I think they're smart enough to realise that if they mess too much with search results in an unethical way, people will get pissed off and go elsewhere. A government body could have any number of varied and colourful motivations. They might want to pander to the latest anti-whatever craze and ban all related results. They might abuse their power for political purposes (far worse than commercial abuse imho). Importantly, they might mandate that everything has to go through them. With search engines being private, I at least have the choice to go elsewhere. If you make this a public, government affair, they might pass laws requiring you to use their search engine, or other equally asinine things. Google at least is under no illusion that the only way it can convince people to use it is to provide the best results.
  - madair 17y ago
    A typical set of fears of regulation. At least you clarify that you really meant what you said. The people who think the market will self-regulate remain convinced even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, for instance the current banking and mortgage crisis.
    - ryanwaggoner 17y ago
      Actually, the case has been made that the current economic crisis is a good example of the consequences of too much government involvement. I'm not sure I agree, but the fact is that both sides are using this crisis as an example to backup their ideological viewpoints, and there's evidence on both sides. The truth is complex. To characterize one side as just sticking their head in the sand reveals your own bias.
  - madair 17y ago
    It's more profitable for Google to self-censor in China. So they do.
    - spot 17y ago
      self-censorship is "Self-censorship is the act of censoring ... without an authority directly pressuring one to do so" (quoting the wikipedia). needless to say, this is not the case of google in china.
      - madair 17y ago
        Self-censor, or be blocked. They self-censored.
        spot 17y ago
        does "or be blocked" sound like direct pressure to you?
        17y ago
Confusion 17y ago
Private companies try to maximize profits, but that doesn't necessarily mean they do what's best for their users. Fast-food stores encouraging people to eat there often are a good example. Apple refusing certain apps is another one: it's not in my advantage, nor in that of most of my peers, that they limit my choice. Furthermore, not everything can be left to companies. Public utilities like the police and water are supplied/regulated by the government for all the usual reasons. Knowledge is also a public utility. We cannot leave the protection of free speech to companies, or other groups of citizens: they would inevitably suppress certain bits of knowledge from becoming publicly known. Isn't the knowledge of 'where to find what' exactly that kind of knowledge? A near monopoly on search results grants a company great power. In a possible near future, wouldn't it be in Google's best interests to suppress the information of where to find competitors? Not blatantly of course, but when done is subtle ways, will anyone notice? Will anyone believe those who cry wolf? And how devastating it would be to the competition!
- anamax 17y ago
  > Public utilities like the police and water Lots of places get water from private suppliers. And, you might notice a lot of private security. They don't have extraordinary arrest powers, but .... > We cannot leave the protection of free speech to companies, or other groups of citizens: they would inevitably suppress certain bits of knowledge from becoming publicly known. How does a private entity suppress what I want to say? (They may refuse to pay me to say something, refuse to help me say something, or refuse to say something themselves, but that's no suppression.)
  - Confusion 17y ago
    Governments must force companies to publish all kinds of information about their practices, such as a yearly financial report. Without that obligation, that information would never be made public, because the company would force individuals that wanted to publish the data to keep their mouth shut (that follows from the fact that many companies do their best to get an exemption from publishing all kinds of data). Free speech includes the freedom to publish information that has been decided to be 'public information'.
calambrac 17y ago
This is Cory Doctorow, I doubt very much that he means 'government' when he says 'public'.

duien 17y ago

I find it very interesting that in every forum where I've read comments on this article (here, BoingBoing, and Guardian) most people's first assumption is that when Cory says 'public' he means 'government'. Government is never mentioned in the article and the main parallel he draws is Wikipedia, which seems to indicate that by 'public' he means open source. I'm not sure how well an open source philosophy could be applied to search. Most successful open source projects that I can think of are things that you download and run your own copy of, whereas search has to be centralized, to some extent. And centralized means resources -- Google has a huge number of datacenters all over the world and stores many petabytes of data. How could an open source project do something like that? It's an interesting problem to contemplate, but I think the solution would be very difficult.

tjic 17y ago
Cory is a self proclaimed socialist. I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that when he says "public" he means government, just as if a right wing politician said "faith based", it would be a good guess that he meant Christian or Jewish, and not Buddhism.
- graemep 17y ago
  Id you read what he says, the phrase is "public process", which does not suggest something run by the government. He then goes on to draw parallels with Wikipedia, which is also not run by the government. Reading the rest of it, what he has in mind is clearly something open source and distributed, as far from centralised government control as you can get.
- bmj 17y ago
  Still, based on the article, it's pretty clear he is looking at Wikipedia, or open source in general, rather than the State. Could we build such a thing? It'd be as unlikely as a noncommercial, volunteer-written encyclopedia. It would require vast resources. But it would have one gigantic advantage over the proprietary search engines: rather than relying on weak "security through obscurity" to fight spammers, creeps and parasites, such a system could exploit the powerful principles of peer review that are the gold standard in all other areas of information security. Peer review is a critical element in open source software, and less so in governance (though, theoretically, it is supposed to be).

TweedHeads 17y ago

Search is important but much more important is being able to switch search engines at will and without pain. Today you can do that with google, yahoo, ask, etc. So, one company offering the best search service is no threat at all, and competition is always good. As long as Google offers the best service I'll be using them happily.

euroclydon 17y ago
Doesn't somebody need to use yahoo, msn, etc lest we risk being left with only google?
- zimbabwe 17y ago
  Isn't Microsoft trying? It's not like Google exists in a vacuum here. How do you fix the problem? Force Google to break up into separate companies for each search field so their service gets worse? Or do we force other people to use the other services against their will?
zimbabwe 17y ago
I agree with Doctorow that a monopoly is dangerous. But Doctorow doesn't like the idea of a virtual monopoly, either - the sort that a company gets when they're popular for any number of reasons despite having lots of competitors. But then, Doctorow has never quite been a bright bulb, he's just been a loud man with a blog. So it helps to take what he writes with a grain of salt.

hyperbovine 17y ago

I don't see why everyone is so worried. Before there was Google, there was Alta Vista. Before there was Alta Vista, there was Yahoo. This aura of infallibility surrounding Google ignores the historical fact that the reigning king of search has been dethroned at least twice before. People who cry foul at Google's dominance are tacitly stating that the quest for innovative ideas in search and related fields is over. Forever. I have a hard time believing that.

jdrock 17y ago
A good point to remember, but Google has done and continues to do much more than these companies. Its current financial position puts it in a much more defendable fortress than these past companies. The amount of money Google has put into streamlining its operations are, in my opinion, is its real competitive advantage. Google can crawl and analyze the web faster than pretty much anyone (my company is trying to make this is un-true ;) ), which creates a significant barrier to entry.