
Texas Asks Whether Google Violates Search Neutrality - ez77
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/04/technology/04google.html?_r=1&hpw
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narkee
The whole point of search result rankings is to be non-neutral.

Of course there's a bias, towards useful and relevant results. A completely
neutral search engine would be absolutely worthless.

Besides, don't people adhere to the caveat emptor philosophy anymore? If you
disagree with the manner in which Google organizes their search results, you
are free to choose another service, and in no way hindered in doing so.

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ww520
Election year? Tech industry is becoming the preferred political punching bag.

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DTrejo
This makes me sad.

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gojomo
A spectre is haunting America -- the spectre of _state Attorneys General
running for office_.

Whenever I see a story like this Google investigation, my first question is:
"What's this AG running for?" In this case, Texas AG Greg Abbott is running
for reelection to a 3rd term. Often, though, they're running for Governor,
Senator, or other statewide office.

Chris Tolles' piece on TC a couple weeks ago, "When Attorneys General Attack",
is instructive as well:

[http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/19/when-attorneys-general-
atta...](http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/19/when-attorneys-general-attack/)

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nhebb
I think a relevant complaint is when a company like Visual Website Optimizer
has to compete against Google Website Optimzer when Google gets to place their
link as the first AdWords ad. However, I use the word "complaint" instead of
"case" because I have no idea whether there is a legal issue at hand.

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michael_dorfman
The first Adwords ad? That's going to be auctioned, according to the Adwords
methodology, so if Paras wants to pay for it, the #1 position should be his.

Is anyone actually accusing Google of non-competitive behavior in Adwords?

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nhebb
When Google puts one of it's services in the AdWords area, I have never seen
one listed as anything but the first. And even if Google did bid for the top
spot, they have inside access to the AdWords placement algorithm, which other
advertisers have to guess at.

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yanw
There is no such thing as "search neutrality", good search is subjective, also
the sites in question seem like spammy link farms, nothing I would miss in my
search results.

And why is a Texas AG conducting this investigation? not Google nor any of the
other companies involved are based in Texas.

