
Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine (1998) - bookofjoe
http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html
======
tim333
There was some previous discussion

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14289750](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14289750)
(5 comments)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8587541](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8587541)
(11)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3637425](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3637425)
(5)

------
sleavey
It's funny how the prototype search engine page linked by the document
(google.stanford.edu) now presents Stanford's GSuite instance, i.e. the suite
of collaborative tools Google have since produced with the income from the
search business presented in the document.

------
tdevito
> Appendix A: Advertising and Mixed Motives

This section is especially interesting, considering that Larry basically runs
a giant advertising company at this point.

Could the company have been successful if it went down a different path in
terms of revenue?

~~~
beamatronic
It’s interesting to ask the opposite question. How many companies currently
are very successful because they shun advertising and protect the users
privacy?

------
3xblah
"Currently, the predominant business model for commercial search engines is
advertising. The goals of the advertising business model do not always
correspond to providing quality search to users."

"For this type of reason and historical experience with other media [Bagdikian
83], we expect that advertising funded search engines will be inherently
biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers."

"Since it is very difficult even for experts to evaluate search engines,
search engine bias is particularly insidious. A good example was OpenText,
which was reported to be selling companies the right to be listed at the top
of the search results for particular queries [Marchiori 97]."

"This type of bias is much more insidious than advertising, because it is not
clear who "deserves" to be there, and who is willing to pay money to be
listed."

Where do [Ads by Google] appear? It might be easier now to tell the ads from
the results, but the ads are still at the top. The easiest click/tap a user
can make. Who "deserves" to advertise there at the top? The highest bidder, in
a non-transparent auction.

"For example, a search engine could add a small factor to search results from
"friendly" companies, and subtract a factor from results from competitors.
This type of bias is very difficult to detect but could still have a
significant effect on the market. Furthermore, advertising income often
provides an incentive to provide poor quality search results."

Today, we see all manner of compliance with whatever Google asks of websites.
Websites that do "X" will be favoured in search results, and websites that do
not do X will be non-transparently penalised behind the scenes. For example, X
could be use of a protocol or participation in a program controlled by and
designed to benefit Google's business. Over the years, there have been so many
instances of X, I can no longer keep track. HN readers can easily list
multiple examples of X.

"In general, it could be argued from the consumer point of view that the
better the search engine is, the fewer advertisements will be needed for the
consumer to find what they want. This of course erodes the advertising
supported business model of the existing search engines. However, there will
always be money from advertisers who want a customer to switch products, or
have something that is genuinely new. But we believe the issue of advertising
causes enough mixed incentives that it is crucial to have a competitive search
engine that is transparent and in the academic realm."

Google and others have met the world's needs for a commercially-focused,
advertising-funded search engine.

However we still need that "transparent" search engine "in the academic realm"
referred to in this paper. As it happened, Google is not it.

~~~
skybrian
While ads and regular search results on Google are a bit harder to distinguish
these days, I don't think they've actually crossed that line?

Everything else changed, but there is still that.

~~~
3xblah
Because the text-only ads look much like search results, it is arguable they
never needed to cross the line. Having the ad urls appear at the top of the
search results page and be relevant to the search query was enough to get
people to follow them.

However, I think it is indisputable that the "insidious bias" referred to in
the paper has existed for many years, where parties pay to get listed. Of
course, they might not pay Google.

Consider "Parasite SEO" which was just on HN front page.

