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He's raising the observation that the easier it is to game Google, the less useful Google becomes. He's not prescribing a solution. Much less the solution of G
by sroerick 12y ago
He's raising the observation that the easier it is to game Google, the less useful Google becomes.
He's not prescribing a solution. Much less the solution of Google becoming a "far-left government."
But screw equality and open access, right?
- Kalium 12y agoSearch engines are by their very nature un-equal. There's no way around this without removing the value in having a search engine.
- walterbell 12y agoSome search engines, e.g. Google 7 years ago, are less un-equal than others, e.g. Google today.
- Kalium 12y agoThe job of a search engine is to second-guess your desire from limited inputs and try to fulfill it. I can't think of any sane way to be "equal" about that without relying on a lot of subjective judgments. Or being bad at making decisions.
- walterbell 12y agoIs the strategic priority of Google leadership a subjective judgement? Are these subjective judgements objectively implemented? There are always winners and losers for any given ranking algorithm, the question is whether perception of neutrality has improved or declined in the last 7 years. What is the perception of Google's neutrality in enforcement of rules against traffic arbitrage, e.g. search toolbars: http://www.benedelman.org/news/012213-1.html http://www.benedelman.org/news/012213-1.html ?
- Kalium 12y agoAlmost anyone who loses out will perceive things as being subjectively against them. Almost anyone who wins will perceive it as being a sign of their worthiness and objective value.
- sroerick 12y agoYeah, but who is making those decisions? Google? SEO agents? Large multinational corporations? Wikipedia is subjective too, that doesn't mean that they just give in and let PR people manage the thing.
- Kalium 12y agoAmong other things, they pay attention to whether or not the user comes back to look at results again. So in a significant way, it's the market.
- sroerick 12y agoHis point, and something I agree with, is that the easier gamification becomes, the less useful a search engine becomes. I don't know if this is true for everyone. It probably isn't. (at least it isn't immediately obvious.) But for the author it is, and I agree wholeheartedly.
- rtperson 12y ago> He's not proscribing a solution. The word you want is "prescribe." To "proscribe" means to make forbidden or illegal. https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=proscribe%20definition https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&e...
- sroerick 12y agoWhoops, thanks.
- asuffield 12y agoRead the article carefully and you'll see that he does in fact prescribe a "solution": take search results away from entities who have lots of them and hand them out equally to everybody, so that everybody gets a "fair" amount of users directed to their site. ...which would of course render it utterly useless to those users and destroy any value it has as a search engine. He even states that his main objection to Google search is that it is not acting as an artificial "leveller" to change society. This is the manifesto of a far-left government. Google doesn't do these things because it's neither far-left nor a government, and his request is both poorly thought-out and quite bizarre.