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It's convenient to think our work is so sophisticated, and that lawmakers are simpletons. But that's a naive view. They want the algorithm disclosed as a legal

It's convenient to think our work is so sophisticated, and that lawmakers are simpletons. But that's a naive view. They want the algorithm disclosed as a legal matter to determine whether competitors are disadvantaged. Which probably means they are more interested in email than source code. There exist hyperintelligent lawyers. Yes, smart enough to understand search. A law firm like Keker and Van Nest [1] could go in there and answer the question. France could be willing to spend a billion to find out, and that's more than they need. Legislation of technology is frightening to any technologist. But it's much more dangerous if we dismiss the process as ridiculous and refuse to recognize any underlying concerns. Because then technologists won't have any say in the outcome. [1] http://www.kvn.com/ http://www.kvn.com/ EDIT: Paul you're such a prominent guy, I don't mean to speak too strongly, but people really listen to what you say. Entrepreneurs ought to know that legal matters are not so easily dismissed. I do hope, generously speaking, the startups are the ones that call KVN and not the legislators.

x0x0 12y ago
Google has (very effectively) played the "oh noes, it's all machine learning" card. But machine learning is nothing more than codified human judgement (yes, I get that for example the conditional expectation minimizes the expected squared error, but who picked the expected squared error to minimize?) The point is, they wish the ranking algorithm to be seen as some divine choice and hence not subject to criticism rather than a mathematical extension of human choices. So has google put a finger on the scale to rank google properties more highly? Based on their behavior with the results page (vs yelp, for example), I would be surprised if they do, but not very surprised. Nonetheless, now that google search results are the internet for many people -- and chrome's address bar is used to help blur that distinction -- it's fair that people outside google, represented by governments, start having a say in who shows up and where. That's what happens when you're a monopoly. It is slightly ironic that bing is the best thing that's happened to google in a decade. Where it not for Balmer deciding to play search engine, google would be known to be a 95+% monopoly in the US as well. Bing allows them to pretend they aren't (though on my blog, for example, 99.28% of ~7k search referral visitors comes from google.)
- cromwellian 12y ago
  The fallacy is, there's mostly likely no one single 'algorithm' anymore. There are most likely hundreds, farmed out in a distributed manner, with the final SERP page coming from merging many different rankings together.
  - x0x0 12y ago
    That doesn't matter. At the end of the day, for each query, there is produced a single ranking. Given access to the data, or more ideally the ability to rapidly batch query, one could ask does being a google owned or rev-share site affect rankings? And if so, up or down? These are the questions statistics is made to answer. edit -- and it doesn't even necessarily need be hardwired. For example, google could have more visibility into site interactions on google owned or tooled (GA) sites, and that could tend to lead to lower serps. Ie just the presence of certain features, only available to google when google owns or tools a site, could tend to produce lower ratings no matter what those features are. This is, I would argue, dirty pool for what is effectively a monopoly. And statistics can answer these questions.
    - minot 12y ago
      Imagine if latency was one of the signals Google used to determine ranking. Now imagine that Googlebot gets a ping of half for an application that uses Google App Engine as opposed to someone who uses a raspberry pie at home. Would you say that the makers and users of Raspberry pie now have grounds to sue Google for ranking them lower?
      - walterbell 12y ago
        What about geographic latency? Could user or regional preferences be an input into ranking?
      - x0x0 12y ago
        Because lots of the internet is being served off raspberry pis located in peoples' living rooms? Don't be deliberately obtuse.
stretchwithme 12y ago
One camp creates machines that actually work and coerce no one to do business with them. The other has to use force. That's all they know how to use. Its their solution to every problem.
mercurial 12y ago
> It's convenient to think our work is so sophisticated, and that lawmakers are simpletons. But that's a naive view. I don't think anybody is suggesting they are simpletons. Unfortunately, French lawmakers are fairly tech-illiterate on average (as demonstrated by the recent vote for the mass surveillance law). That said, I kind of agree with you. Investigating Google is one thing, asking for them to spill their trade secrets is another.
tomjen3 12y ago
Technologists don't win by fighting in the legal system - the others have centuries of advantages here. If the others call KVN then they need to know that if they answer they better hope they have never used Facebook and that their daughters haven't shared any photos on snap-chat. What we need is not to be involved in matters of law, but to have a mutual defence treaty that will ensure the law doesn't get to steal and redistribute what we make. France needs Google, but to Google France is just one customer - and they should treat them accordingly.

x0x0 12y ago

Google has (very effectively) played the "oh noes, it's all machine learning" card. But machine learning is nothing more than codified human judgement (yes, I get that for example the conditional expectation minimizes the expected squared error, but who picked the expected squared error to minimize?) The point is, they wish the ranking algorithm to be seen as some divine choice and hence not subject to criticism rather than a mathematical extension of human choices. So has google put a finger on the scale to rank google properties more highly? Based on their behavior with the results page (vs yelp, for example), I would be surprised if they do, but not very surprised. Nonetheless, now that google search results are the internet for many people -- and chrome's address bar is used to help blur that distinction -- it's fair that people outside google, represented by governments, start having a say in who shows up and where. That's what happens when you're a monopoly. It is slightly ironic that bing is the best thing that's happened to google in a decade. Where it not for Balmer deciding to play search engine, google would be known to be a 95+% monopoly in the US as well. Bing allows them to pretend they aren't (though on my blog, for example, 99.28% of ~7k search referral visitors comes from google.)

cromwellian 12y ago
The fallacy is, there's mostly likely no one single 'algorithm' anymore. There are most likely hundreds, farmed out in a distributed manner, with the final SERP page coming from merging many different rankings together.
- x0x0 12y ago
  That doesn't matter. At the end of the day, for each query, there is produced a single ranking. Given access to the data, or more ideally the ability to rapidly batch query, one could ask does being a google owned or rev-share site affect rankings? And if so, up or down? These are the questions statistics is made to answer. edit -- and it doesn't even necessarily need be hardwired. For example, google could have more visibility into site interactions on google owned or tooled (GA) sites, and that could tend to lead to lower serps. Ie just the presence of certain features, only available to google when google owns or tools a site, could tend to produce lower ratings no matter what those features are. This is, I would argue, dirty pool for what is effectively a monopoly. And statistics can answer these questions.
  - minot 12y ago
    Imagine if latency was one of the signals Google used to determine ranking. Now imagine that Googlebot gets a ping of half for an application that uses Google App Engine as opposed to someone who uses a raspberry pie at home. Would you say that the makers and users of Raspberry pie now have grounds to sue Google for ranking them lower?
    - walterbell 12y ago
      What about geographic latency? Could user or regional preferences be an input into ranking?
    - x0x0 12y ago
      Because lots of the internet is being served off raspberry pis located in peoples' living rooms? Don't be deliberately obtuse.

stretchwithme 12y ago

One camp creates machines that actually work and coerce no one to do business with them. The other has to use force. That's all they know how to use. Its their solution to every problem.

mercurial 12y ago

> It's convenient to think our work is so sophisticated, and that lawmakers are simpletons. But that's a naive view. I don't think anybody is suggesting they are simpletons. Unfortunately, French lawmakers are fairly tech-illiterate on average (as demonstrated by the recent vote for the mass surveillance law). That said, I kind of agree with you. Investigating Google is one thing, asking for them to spill their trade secrets is another.

tomjen3 12y ago

Technologists don't win by fighting in the legal system - the others have centuries of advantages here. If the others call KVN then they need to know that if they answer they better hope they have never used Facebook and that their daughters haven't shared any photos on snap-chat. What we need is not to be involved in matters of law, but to have a mutual defence treaty that will ensure the law doesn't get to steal and redistribute what we make. France needs Google, but to Google France is just one customer - and they should treat them accordingly.