Tim Lee

Google Dilemma

James Grimmelman has a great short paper called “The Google Dilemma” that discusses the social implications of search engine results. Check it out.

July 21, 2008 | Comments |

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    It is a good paper, but I'll tell you two things that I didn't like about it.

    Whoever controls the search engines, perhaps, controls the Internet itself.


    This struck me as vast overstatement. There are lots of protocols and platforms on the Internet for which search is not - and can not be - a meaningful bottleneck. Reading it, I suspected it would be the false premise for some later conclusion.

    Because the paper is even-keeled, the conclusion I was watching for was not over-played, but it came through as an implication here:

    [T]he First Amendment reasoning [that the choice of how to rank results is a form of protected speech] is worrisome. If taken at face value, it would suggest that the First Amendment provides an absolute shield for search engines to rerank sites at will, for any reason at all, even a deliberately malicious reason. What's more, it would suggest that the government is powerless to make the search engines stop, even in cases where the reranking was obviously malicious and dishonest.


    The First Amendment reasoning doesn't actually carry this far. The First Amendment wouldn't protect ranking choices that were libelous, for example. Search King was shady - it got what it deserved. Later cases will explore all the countours of First Amendment protection for search algorithms in closer cases. In short, don't take these cases at face value.

    But the paragraph sets up this unutterable situation where Google gets to eliminate entire sites - its competition, the politically disfavored, whatever - from "the Internet," and government can't do anything to stop it. This is at least "worrisome" to the author, and I take him to mean that it's wrong, in which case something should be done about it.

    I don't think it's terribly worrisome, and don't think anything needs to be done about it. Were Google to knock out sites at will or whim, the Streisand Effect would kick in like you've never seen before. Any attempt by Google to censor would almost certainly be self-defeating.

    Which is why the premise that the leading search engine controls "the Internet" is so wrong. I use RSS (as just one example) every day to gather information from all over the Web. Any blog post or news story about search engine misbehavior would reach me and tens of thousands of others very rapidly, without any intermediary saying yes or no.

    Along with visiting the 'banned' site, my Internet-using brethren and I would look around for a search engine that hadn't corrupted its own service. We would look for a better product.

    Google recognizes this. It knows that its legitimacy and its profits ride on a narrow ledge of credible neutrality. If it steps away from the ledge, it steps away from profits and shareholder value. Let them control their search algorithm. The oversight of the media and users will harness them to our ends. The unspeakable problem can be spoken of, and it can be disposed of in fairly short order.
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    Lo and behold, here's an example of the continuous oversight by the interested communities (shorthand: "the market") that keeps Google in check.

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