We’ve written a lot lately about Microsoft’s efforts to reinvent itself, first rebranding its Live search engine as the Bing, and then partnering with Yahoo! to make Bing the search engine on Yahoo!’s still-impressive empire of content and services. But if Microsoft is going to beat Google in Search 3.0 and master shifts in the driving paradigms of the Internet from search and browsers to ubiquitous integration of social networking and other paradigms as yet unforeseen, Microsoft will need more than just brilliant engineering: They’ll need clever marketing.
So it seems that the software titan is turning to user-generated advertising, such as this gem:
WARNING: Battlestar Galactica spoiler: Google may well be in danger of losing its monopoly on cool to Microsoft if Bingcan get at least four of the Final Five Cylons to volunteer as back-up singers in a promo video contest.
Google clearly considers Microsoft a threat, having recently launched an ad campaign of its own for its Apps services, which compete directly with Microsoft Office.
I’m listening to the audiobook of Telecosm, George Gilder’s prophetic book about how abundant broadband would revolutionize the planet—which I recommend to everyone. I came across this passage, which reminded me just how good we really have it:
Reported to catalog only 16 percent of web pages, the best Internet search engines are foundering under the load, taking as long as six months to add new content.
If that was Search 1.0, Search 2.0 is great! Today’s search engines will index this post in a matter of minutes and while there are still parts of the “Deep Web” that aren’t crawled, a number of Search 3.0 upstarts are working on solving that problem, too!
Cory Doctorow has called for a Wikipedia-style effort to build an open source, non-profit search engine. From his column in The Guardian:
What’s more, the way that search engines determine the ranking and relevance of any given website has become more critical than the editorial berth at the New York Times combined with the chief spots at the major TV networks. Good search engine placement is make-or-break advertising. It’s ideological mindshare. It’s relevance…
It’s a terrible idea to vest this much power with one company, even one as fun, user-centered and technologically excellent as Google. It’s too much power for a handful of companies to wield.
The question of what we can and can’t see when we go hunting for answers demands a transparent, participatory solution. There’s no dictator benevolent enough to entrust with the power to determine our political, commercial, social and ideological agenda. This is one for The People.
Put that way, it’s obvious: if search engines set the public agenda, they should be public.
He goes on to claim that “Google’s algorithms are editorial decisions.” For Doctorow, this is an outrage: “so much editorial power is better vested in big, transparent, public entities than a few giant private concerns.”
I wish Doctorow well in his effort to crowdsource a Google-killer, but I’m more than a little skeptical that anyone would actually want to use his search engine of The People. My guess is that, like most things produced in the name of “The People” (Soviet toilet paper comes to mind), it will probably won’t be much fun to use, and will likely chafe noticeably. (For the record, I love and regularly use Wikipedia; I just don’t think that model is unlikely to produce a particularly useful search engine. As Doctorow himself has noted of Google, “they make incredibly awesome search tools.”)
But I’m glad to see that Doctorow has conceded an important point of constitutional law: The First Amendment protects the editorial discretion of search engines, like all private companies, to decide what to content to communicate. For a newspaper, that means deciding which articles or editorials to run. For a library or bookstore, it means which books to carry. For search engines, it means how to write their search algorithims. Continue reading →
The Progress & Freedom Foundation has just launched the new Center for Internet Freedom. CIF offers an alternative to the proliferation of advocacy groups calling for government intervention online by offering timely analyses and critiques of proposals that diminish the vital role of free markets, free speech and property rights. We aim to drive the Internet policy debate in new directions by emphasizing a layered approach of technological innovation, user education, user self-help, industry self-regulation, and the enforcement of existing laws consistent with the First Amendment. Such an approach is a less restrictive—and generally more effective—alternative to increased regulation.
Here are some of the issues I’ll be working on as CIF’s Director in conjunction with my esteemed colleagues Adam Thierer, Adam Marcus, and adjunct fellows:
Defending online advertising as the lifeblood of online content & services, especially in the “Long Tail”;
Emphasizing market solutions to problems of privacy protection, especially regarding the use of cookies and packet inspection data;
Protecting online speech and expression both in the U.S. and abroad;
Defending Section 230 immunity for Internet intermediaries;
Opposing online taxation and legal barriers to e-commerce and digital payments, especially at the state and local levels; and
Ensuring that Internet governance remains transparent and accountable without hampering the evolution of the Internet.
By Berin Szoka & Adam Thierer
Progress Snapshot 4.19 (PDF)
Since the fall of 2008, a debate has raged in Washington over “targeted online advertising,” an ominous-sounding shorthand for the customization of Internet ads to match the interests of users. Not only are these ads more relevant and therefore less annoying to Internet users than untargeted ads, they are more cost-effective to advertisers and more profitable to websites that sell ad space. While such “smarter” online advertising scares some—prompting comparisons to a corporate “Big Brother” spying on Internet users—it is also expected to fuel the rapid growth of Internet advertising revenues from $21.7 billion in 2007 to $50.3 billion in 2011-an annual growth rate of more than 24%. Since this growing revenue stream ultimately funds the free content and services that Internet users increasingly take for granted, policymakers should think very carefully about what’s really best for consumers before rushing to regulate an industry that has thrived for over a decade under a layered approach that combines technological “self-help” by privacy-wary consumers, consumer education, industry self-regulation, existing state privacy tort laws, and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) enforcement of corporate privacy policies.
In an upcoming PFF Special Report, we will address the many technical, economic, and legal aspects of this complicated policy issue-especially the possibility that regulation may unintentionally thwart market responses to the growing phenomenon of users blocking online ads.
We will also issue a three-part challenge to those who call for regulation of online advertising practices:
Identify the harm or market failure that requires government intervention.
Prove that there is no less restrictive alternative to regulation.
Explain how the benefits of regulation outweigh its costs.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology. Learn more about TLF →
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The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.
