
“advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased...”-Google (1998) - staunch
http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html
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rokhayakebe
I think someone killed this thread.

Admin could you please explain why?

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staunch
I sent an email to ask. It is curious and suspicious.

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rokhayakebe
Very.

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staunch
The mods ate it, for what seems to me to be capricious editorial reasons, but
oh well.

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jgmmo
Skip to 8 Appendix A for the discussion about advertising, motives, and bias.

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Coding_Cat
I found the following excerpt particularly funny: > 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. [...] This business
model resulted in an uproar, and OpenText has ceased to be a viable search
engine.

...So exactly like Google is doing now?

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jgmmo
I also thought this interesting. On second read though, trying to give them a
more charitable interpretation, I realized maybe they believe since they are
using ads that are 'clearly labeled as ads' it is a different thing - as
opposed to OpenText just moving an ad into the top ranked search result spot
and thus when using OpenText youd never know if you are looking at the real
result or an ad.

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Coding_Cat
> 'clearly labeled as ads'

As your quotes might very well imply, they've been making the ads more and
more hidden and at this point the faint yellow background is no more than lip-
service to the idea of clearly marking paid promotions. IMHO.

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heimatau
Advertisers have the money though, not common folk (wealth gap is only getting
wider). The business model would be difficult to do but could be realized in
the years to come.

