“As we become increasingly dependent on the Internet, we need to be increasingly concerned about how it is regulated,” Adam Raff writes in his op-ed piece for yesterday’s “The New York Times.” Raff’s statement relates to the Federal Communications Committee considering regulations that would foster “network neutrality” — ensuring fair access to all Internet content from service providers. The importance of network neutrality seems obvious to me, a matter of fact.
Another matter of fact is that when I went to more fully investigate Raff’s op-ed piece, I did so with a Google search. Like many, I depend on Google as the gateway to the vast majority of the information I encounter on the Web. This, I realize, could lead to my own intellectual undoing and, according to Raff, could lead to the undoing of many businesses.
According to Raff, co-founder the Internet technology firm Foundem, Google dominates 71 percent of the United States search market. Raff says that Google dramatically influences the flow of information by how the search engine presents results. Results are governed by Google’s editorial policies (that have no external oversight). These policies can help one company thrive (e.g. one owned by or connected to Google), while helping to ensuring that another company fails (e.g. a Google competitor).
Raff explains:
“One way that Google exploits this control is by imposing covert ‘penalties’ that can strike legitimate and useful Web sites, removing them entirely from its search results or placing them so far down the rankings that they will in all likelihood never be found. For three years, my company’s vertical search and price-comparison site, Foundem, was effectively “disappeared” from the Internet in this way.”
This should give us all pause.
Even if Raff is wrong about Google “disappearing” his company, his lucid op-ed piece has reminded me that what is at stake here is not just how well a given company does, but how well a given idea does. The most exciting promise of the Internet is the free exchange of information. Given how wonderfully this exchange is taking place very day, it’s easy to forget that the exchange might not be as free flowing as it seems.
Google is a truly wonderful tool. (I am so enamored by Google that it’s hard not to describe it as “magical”). Every day I work on my computer Google delivers me the most amazing wealth of information from the far corners of the world — with just a few clicks. But Raff has got me thinking about the obvious: Every day, what amazing and compelling information is Google not dishing up to me?
To address the increasing, monopolistic power of Google (and all major search engines) have over information, Raff proposes that the F.C.C. insist on “search neutrality” as well as the “network neutrality” rules now under consideration. He writes:
“The F.C.C. needs to look beyond network neutrality and include ’search neutrality’: the principle that search engines should have no editorial policies other than that their results be comprehensive, impartial and based solely on relevance.”
Although I know very little about this topic, I wholeheartedly agree with Raff’s concern. His suggestion about F.C.C. rules on search neutrality seems like a good one, but clearly nowhere near any kind of complete solution for a problem that cannot easily be solved through regulation.
With or without regulation, it seems that it is important simply that we are all skeptically wary of Google, just as we would be of any great monopoly of information. Frankly, I’m not sure what else to do.
After reading Raff’s op-ed piece, to research the topic further I did what I always do. I preformed a couple Google searches and clicked on one of the very top links Google presented me with. This impulse to “find answers by Googling” right after reading about Google’s shortcomings unnerved me slightly. But as a total Google addict, utterly depending on the search engine’s help throughout each day without even realizing it, I wasn’t sure what other search engine might give me greater neutrality.
I am a seriously huge fan of Google — hell, I love Google! — but shouldn’t I be seriously wary of being a huge fan of a company that I am allowing to filter the way I see the world?
Just to be clear. . .
I am not siding with Adam Raff against Google for the alleged “disappearing” of Foundem. (When I checked, Google ranked Foundem in first place for a search of “Foundem.”) Also, without further research (via Google or any other means), I am not supporting any F.C.C. regulations — in the works or hypothetical. As Frank Reed wrote intelligently in a post today for “Marketing Pilgrim” in response to Raff’s op-ed, “Why should anyone in the free market be obligated to being relegated to a public service status just because they do something better than most?”
It’s a good point. But Reed, too, finds it a “bit creepy at times to see just how far reaching Google is with regard to services.” And really, that is my central point: It is appropriate to find advances in technology (and technology companies) both wondrous and creepy at the same time, and that being wary is a good thing.