NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] Two Wacky Anti-Google Media Blasts: Neutrality and Search Horrors!
Two Wacky Anti-Google Media Blasts: Neutrality and Search Horrors!
http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000481.html
Greetings. With the elections over, and the year winding down as we
continue (to quote Tom Lehrer) "sliding down the razor blade of
life..." -- it appears that some media outlets have decided that now's
the time to try come up with some dirt on Google -- whether accurate or
not isn't the issue, of course.
The big blowup was in today's Wall Street Journal, which published a
story essentially claiming that Google and Lawrence Lessig had
abandoned their network neutrality principles
( http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122929270127905065.html ).
In reality, it turns out that what I'll charitably call a "confused" WSJ
was inappropriately commingling net neutrality with Google's desire to
deploy "edge servers" for high volume content (e.g. YouTube) and so
attempted -- falsely -- to portray Google as acting in a duplicitous
manner.
Google quickly blogged a statement clarifying the situation
( http://tinyurl.com/google-caching ), which was followed up by an
AP story today as well ( http://tinyurl.com/google-ap-wsj ).
Lessig published his own retort
( http://lessig.org/blog/2008/12/the_madeup_dramas_of_the_wall.html ).
Now, how could the "fair and balanced" Journal have made such a
mistake? Oh wait, I'm sorry, that's the slogan for Fox News --
they're so easy to confuse since Murdoch bought the Journal!
Across the pond, The Register published a piece blasting
Google for statements made by Google Search VP Marissa Mayer,
suggesting that at some point in the future Google might use input
from the user community to help modify obvious problems with
particular search results listings
( http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/12/12/googlewashing_revisited ).
It's been long known that despite diligent work by Google to try limit
their impacts, the use of "Google bombing" and "Googlewashing"
techniques by sites -- in attempts to unfairly skew search results --
are still continuing. This can cause obviously inappropriate results
to be driven to the top, and meaningful organic results being
suppressed. Even with the best tuning, autonomous algorithms can only
go so far in blocking abusive techniques.
I for one find to be inappropriate any knee-jerk reactions against the
concept of the tuning of search results based on the careful analysis
of user input. I'm not saying that there aren't a bunch of
potentially complex issues involved, including when such actions
should be taken (my vote would be as infrequently as practicable) and
to what extent such changes would be human-supervised to avoid "gaming
actions" similar in concept to Google bombing/washing.
But overall, the concept of such tuning (and keep in mind that it's
only a theoretical at this stage) has considerable potential merit --
if appropriately used -- to improve the user search experience.
Enough for now. Back to sliding down the razor blade, gang.
The fun never stops.
--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein
lauren@vortex.com or lauren@pfir.org
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800
http://www.pfir.org/lauren
Co-Founder, PFIR
- People For Internet Responsibility - http://www.pfir.org
Co-Founder, NNSquad
- Network Neutrality Squad - http://www.nnsquad.org
Founder, PRIVACY Forum - http://www.vortex.com
Member, ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com