
Cory Doctorow: Search is too important to leave to one company – even Google - rms
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/jun/01/search-public-google-privacy-rights
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swombat
I'm not entirely convinced that a public body would be better at determining
what should be visible than a private company. Both have their pros and cons.
Private companies will tend to look at what's best for their users in order to
maximise profits. Public bodies will tend to look at what's appropriate
politically.

Considering how corrupt most political bodies are (see all the various
lobbying efforts and other expenses scandals) and considering the importance
of search, I'm not sure that a public body _can_ be entrusted with it. It's
too important to screw it up in the way that governments tend to.

~~~
Confusion
Private companies try to maximize profits, but that doesn't necessarily mean
they do what's best for their users. Fast-food stores encouraging people to
eat there often are a good example. Apple refusing certain apps is another
one: it's not in my advantage, nor in that of most of my peers, that they
limit my choice.

Furthermore, not everything can be left to companies. Public utilities like
the police and water are supplied/regulated by the government for all the
usual reasons. Knowledge is also a public utility. We cannot leave the
protection of free speech to companies, or other groups of citizens: they
would inevitably suppress certain bits of knowledge from becoming publicly
known.

Isn't the knowledge of 'where to find what' exactly that kind of knowledge? A
near monopoly on search results grants a company great power. In a possible
near future, wouldn't it be in Google's best interests to suppress the
information of where to find competitors? Not blatantly of course, but when
done is subtle ways, will anyone notice? Will anyone believe those who cry
wolf? And how devastating it would be to the competition!

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anamax
> Public utilities like the police and water

Lots of places get water from private suppliers.

And, you might notice a lot of private security. They don't have extraordinary
arrest powers, but ....

> We cannot leave the protection of free speech to companies, or other groups
> of citizens: they would inevitably suppress certain bits of knowledge from
> becoming publicly known.

How does a private entity suppress what I want to say? (They may refuse to pay
me to say something, refuse to help me say something, or refuse to say
something themselves, but that's no suppression.)

~~~
Confusion
Governments must force companies to publish all kinds of information about
their practices, such as a yearly financial report. Without that obligation,
that information would never be made public, because the company would force
individuals that wanted to publish the data to keep their mouth shut (that
follows from the fact that many companies do their best to get an exemption
from publishing all kinds of data).

Free speech includes the freedom to publish information that has been decided
to be 'public information'.

~~~
anamax
Actually, no, that's not free speech. (BTW - That's not the employee's data,
so it isn't their call.)

As to financial information, if a company doesn't provide the information that
you want, don't do whatever it is that you're considering doing with them.
You're free to not deal with a company for any reason that you please,
including lack of info, bad info, dice rolls, or even no reason.

Same with people. I have no "free speech" right to information about you but
I'm also not obligated to deal with you if I don't like what I hear or don't
hear.

~~~
Confusion
Do you agree that there is a difference between what the government stipulates
you are free to say and what a company would like you to be free to say, if
they had their way?

If so, then isn't the difference between the two covered by the protection of
free speech? The company would like you to shut up, like pressure groups would
like you to shut up about certain things, but they can't make you shut up,
because Big Brother is protecting you, because it has decided that this is a
kind of information that you are allowed to publish. Isn't that protection of
free speech?

~~~
anamax
> Do you agree that there is a difference between what the government
> stipulates you are free to say and what a company would like you to be free
> to say, if they had their way?

The question doesn't make any sense.

Free speech is a right of "owners".

I'm free to blather on and on about MY stuff. Companies have no way to
intefere in that because they don't have police and stuff. Governments do.

I don't have any free speech rights WRT stuff owned by other people.

Suppose that I worked at Google. It's not a violation of my "free speech"
rights for Google to refuse to publish Google's stuff, whether or not I
produced said stuff for them.

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duien
I find it very interesting that in every forum where I've read comments on
this article (here, BoingBoing, and Guardian) most people's first assumption
is that when Cory says 'public' he means 'government'. Government is never
mentioned in the article and the main parallel he draws is Wikipedia, which
seems to indicate that by 'public' he means open source.

I'm not sure how well an open source philosophy could be applied to search.
Most successful open source projects that I can think of are things that you
download and run your own copy of, whereas search has to be centralized, to
some extent. And centralized means resources -- Google has a huge number of
datacenters all over the world and stores many petabytes of data. How could an
open source project do something like that?

It's an interesting problem to contemplate, but I think the solution would be
very difficult.

~~~
tjic
Cory is a self proclaimed socialist. I don't think it's unreasonable to assume
that when he says "public" he means government, just as if a right wing
politician said "faith based", it would be a good guess that he meant
Christian or Jewish, and not Buddhism.

~~~
graemep
Id you read what he says, the phrase is "public process", which does not
suggest something run by the government. He then goes on to draw parallels
with Wikipedia, which is also not run by the government.

Reading the rest of it, what he has in mind is clearly something open source
and distributed, as far from centralised government control as you can get.

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hyperbovine
I don't see why everyone is so worried. Before there was Google, there was
Alta Vista. Before there was Alta Vista, there was Yahoo. This aura of
infallibility surrounding Google ignores the historical fact that the reigning
king of search has been dethroned at least twice before. People who cry foul
at Google's dominance are tacitly stating that the quest for innovative ideas
in search and related fields is over. Forever. I have a hard time believing
that.

~~~
jdrock
A good point to remember, but Google has done and continues to do much more
than these companies. Its current financial position puts it in a much more
defendable fortress than these past companies.

The amount of money Google has put into streamlining its operations are, in my
opinion, is its real competitive advantage. Google can crawl and analyze the
web faster than pretty much anyone (my company is trying to make this is un-
true ;) ), which creates a significant barrier to entry.

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TweedHeads
Search is important but much more important is being able to switch search
engines at will and without pain.

Today you can do that with google, yahoo, ask, etc.

So, one company offering the best search service is no threat at all, and
competition is always good.

As long as Google offers the best service I'll be using them happily.

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euroclydon
Doesn't somebody need to use yahoo, msn, etc lest we risk being left with only
google?

~~~
zimbabwe
Isn't Microsoft trying? It's not like Google exists in a vacuum here.

How do you fix the problem? Force Google to break up into separate companies
for each search field so their service gets worse? Or do we force other people
to use the other services against their will?

