more on authors' reply re NYT op-ed "More Is Not Necessarily Better"

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Gerry Faulhaber <gerry-faulhaber () mchsi com>
Date: August 27, 2004 10:11:56 AM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Subject: Re: [IP] authors' reply re NYT op-ed "More Is Not Necessarily 
Better"

Dave [for IP, if you want to continue this thread]--

Well, I guess we all miss nuances.

My point was substantially more than that ranking/presenting search 
results
by popularity is probably a good idea (in the sense that I don't have a
better one).  My point was that if this isn't the best way to do it (or 
is
not the best way to do it for a significant minority of folks), then the
market will provide: other search engines will enter the fray with a 
better
algorithm that unearths those truly interesting sites we are all missing
because they are unpopular now.  Note that we don't need to have only 
one
mass market search engine; the entry barriers to providing search 
engines
are amazingly low.  We could well have new search engines serving niche
markets (best dating services, or Punkin Chunkin news).

Is this just economists' hype about markets?  Recall that Google itself 
was
not on the search engine radar scope way back when.  It was Alta Vista,
Lycos, Inktomi that ruled the roost.  They all got seduced by the portal
concept and attempted to exploit their customers with paid placements 
(as I
understand it) and useless presentation.  Google came from nowhere with 
a
better technology and scattered the field before it.  They didn't need a
huge amount of capital or major advertising (low entry barriers).  They 
just
had a better product, better searches, and more credibility than their
incumbent competitors.  The world did indeed beat a path to their door. 
 If
Google doesn't get it right, I expect the very same thing to happen to 
them.

The point is that the market provides a self-correcting mechanism to 
solve
the problems raised by the authors.  We need to be personally vigilant, 
of
course, and entrepreneurs who might be viable competitors need to be
vigilant, but I don't see this as a social or public policy issue.  A
mechanism is in place and functioning that can solve the problems to 
which
the authors alert us.

Professor Gerald R. Faulhaber
Business and Public Policy Dept.
Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA 19104

----- Original Message -----
From: "Dave Farber" <dave () farber net>
To: <ip () v2 listbox com>
Sent: Thursday, August 26, 2004 6:37 PM
Subject: [IP] authors' reply re NYT op-ed "More Is Not Necessarily 
Better"


> ___
>
>
> ...... Forwarded Message .......
> From: "K. N. Cukier" <kn () cukier com>
> To: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
> Cc: Matt Hindman <hindman () gmail com>
> Date: Thu, 26 Aug 2004 19:57:02 +0100
> Subj: authors' reply re NYT op-ed "More Is Not Necessarily Better"
>
> Dave,
>
> We'd be grateful if you'd post this note to the list, as a quick reply
> to the thoughtful criticisms on IP to our NYT op-ed on Google and the
> concentration of online information. Many thanks.
>
> KNC & MH
> _______________
>
> Reply to IP List Comments:
>
> If truth is the first casualty of war, then nuance is the first victim
> of journalism.... We appreciate Gerry's and Eszter's comments on IP
> about our op-ed in Monday's New York Times, about the social
> implications of Google. Since there is more to our views than can be
> crammed into 700 words for the mainstream media, we'd like to offer a
> quick response (and added a few cites to our work at the bottom).
>
> Gerry's criticism, in short, is: "No-duh, and it's a good thing, too!"
> Eszter suggests that our stats overstate the case (her other points,
> which focus on users' lack of skill, supports our central argument).
> We'll address each separately, but first state: 1. Google is of course
> a godsend for finding information online, and 2. the phenomenon we
> discuss, that the technology winnows what people see, is not Google's
> fault (though their approach extenuates the situation).
>
> To Gerry's point, we agree that there is an overabundance of
> information, and the use of filters -- be it newspaper editors or new
> technologies -- isn't newsworthy. But if filtering is inevitable, it is
> equally clear that how these filters work matters for society. In the
> case of newspapers, they have inherent and fairly understood biases;
> sometimes, such as with the WSJ, it's worn on their sleeves. Likewise,
> technology is rarely neutral, though why so is less apparent. It is
> probably fair to say that most people are unaware of the tradeoffs
> between locating information online and the diversity of information
> that is visible, which happens every time they use a search engine. The
> article was meant to raise that awareness.
>
> Gerry bases his criticism on the idea that the great mass of overlooked
> information must necessarily be uninteresting anyway. That is a hard
> statement to accept. Consider what the hierarchical nature of the Web
> means on an empirical level, for instance, for a search on a sensitive
> topic like abortion. Google identifies 4,010,000 pages; Matt's research
> (link at bottom) suggests that the top-site in that category accounts
> for roughly 30% of all in-bound links (and thus is most prominent in
> searches), the top 10 pages account for 70% of all links, and the top
> 50 almost 90%. Stop to realize what this means: the other 4,009,950
> pages on the topic get only 10% of all in-bound links combined -- and
> as a result, they are essentially invisible online. Is most of this
> content poor? Probably. All of it? Surely not.
>
> As for Eszter's comment that the stats we use overstate our case, we
> disagree. The data that Google's and Yahoo's technology account for 95%
> of all searches comes from comscore Media Metrix, which despite its
> limitations, is nevertheless the best stats available (see:
> http://searchenginewatch.com/reports/article.php/2156431). In the
> article, we use this data to highlight market power, not agreement
> among search results, and in this context the 95% figure is very
> appropriate. (Microsoft's intention to enter the search market will
> bring the number of competitors to three -- but the fact it requires a
> multi-billion-dollar investment to do so actually reinforces our
> point.)
>
> Strikingly, search engine convergence has grown enormously since March
> 2004 when Eszter published her First Monday article, which she cited in
> her note
> (http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue9_3/hargittai/index.html). Her
> piece explains that though AOL and myway.com are based on Google's
> technology, the results are different. However, that is no longer true.
> Take her example of the query "taxes." Entering the term into
> search.aol.com or myway.com now returns EXACTLY the same results as
> Google itself. Try it. Moreover, Yahoo's results for "taxes" are now
> quite close to Google's: the same top site, with seven of the top ten
> now identical.
>
> Taken together, these examples show that the use of link-structure to
> identify content effectively limits the diversity of what the average
> user is exposed to online, even if one uses multiple search engines.
> Compared to the bad old days of search, this seems a tradeoff worth
> making. At the same time, though, we shouldn't be blind to the social
> consequences of search engine convergence.
>
> We're thankful for all the feedback we've received. On a final note,
> the NYT piece served as our swan-song at the NCDG. After two wonderful
> and productive years, we've both recently left our fellowships at the
> Kennedy School; Matt to teach politics at Arizona State University, and
> myself, to cover technology and policy issues for The Economist in
> London. We both look forward to discussing these issues more going
> forward.
>
> Best,
>
> Kenn & Matt
> ______________________
>
> Some references to our previous work on the topic (going from somewhat
> simplified to more complex):
>
> "The Web, Media Diversity and Power Laws"
> Harvard University NCDG Resource Page
> http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/digitalcenter/powerlaw.htm
>
> "More Media, Less Diversity"
> The New York Times, op-ed page, June 2, 2003
> http://www.princeton.edu/~mhindman/NYTimesOpEd2.htm
>
> "Measuring Media Concentration Online and Offline"
> Ford Foundation conference on media diversity, Dec. 2003.
> http://www.cukier.com/writings/webmedia-jan04.htm
>
> "Googlearchy: How a Few Heavily-Linked Sites Dominate Politics Online"
> Early draft chapter of Matt's dissertation
> http://www.princeton.edu/~mhindman/googlearchy--hindman.pdf
>
> To contact the authors:
> Matthew Hindman -- www.hindman.cc -- hindman () gmail com
> Kenneth Neil Cukier -- www.cukier.com -- cukier () gmail com
> (Please note our gmail accounts -- See! We are not anti-Googlists!)
>
> END
>
>
> -------------------------------------
> You are subscribed as gerry-faulhaber () mchsi com
> To manage your subscription, go to
>   http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip
>
> Archives at:
http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/

-------------------------------------
You are subscribed as interesting-people () lists elistx com
To manage your subscription, go to
 http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip

Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/