Re: Urgent Call For a Google At-Large Public Ombudsman

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From:
Date: June 12, 2007 2:26:22 AM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Subject: Re: [IP] Re: Urgent Call For a Google At-Large Public Ombudsman

Dave, please remove my email and name from my email reply.




> How can people who are otherwise liberatarian in viewpoint support  
> an idea like this? Google is  a company like any other...

1) Google is not just a company. If any company wants to be found by  
customers, wants to make sales on the web, or wants to be part of the  
modern world, it has to be findable in Google. People under 35 don't  
use telephone books, magazines, or newspapers anymore. They use  
Google. It's not a choice "to not be on Google". Google isn't a  
company: it has become the infrastructure for the delivery of  
information.

2) Lauren Weinstein writes about the privacy issues at Google. It's  
far more serious than privacy. Very few people understand how Google  
works. There isn't "one Google" and the results you see in your  
search in Miami are not the same as the results someone else sees in  
Seattle. Google constantly adjusts the results according to many  
parameters, incl. user personalization (Google Toolbar), the length  
of the user's search session (you may get different results during  
your session), your physical location, and so on.

There are millions of searches and results, and these constantly  
shift. This means it is literally impossible for anyone outside of  
Google to track the search results.

Results don't appear consistently. They can appear intermittantly.  
Instead of appearing 100% of the time, a result can appear for 90% of  
searches or 80% of searches. There is no way to track this.

It would be easy for Google to slightly suppress a result. So a  
search for a particular company would only appear for 97% of  
searches. That's a small amount, but it is significant for ecommerce.  
This means Google can manipulate the sales and valuation of companies.

It works the other way too. Google can "over-produce" results for a  
publically-traded company. Their earnings and valuation rise slightly.

3) Google's ability to suppress (or enhance) results isn't theory.  
Google has a secret team that suppresses the ranking of people who  
criticize Google. Never complain about Google in Gmail, in a public  
forum, or wherever your comments will be found by Google. Your  
rankings will slide down just a bit. You will lose web traffic to  
your website, your blog, or your company.

That's why I asked Dave to delete my ID from this reply.

This means that Google doesn't have to blacklist you. Nothing that  
blatant. They just lower your ranking. End of problem. Nobody can  
prove anything, because Google is an informational black hole; they  
never reply.

4) The privacy issues are thus both ways: the right to keep one's  
information private, and the right to publicize one's information.  
It's bad to lose privacy, but what is it when one's public persona is  
downranked by Google and one can't be found in searches? Professors,  
researchers, journalists, etc. can be removed from public access. And  
remember: Google doesn't have to blacklist you. They only have to  
lower your ranking. Or show you in the results only intermittantly.

Microsoft was (and still is) a monopoly. But you can use your copy of  
Microsoft Word to write whatever you like.

Google is a far greater danger than Microsoft. Write your emails in  
GMail, use Google word processor, the Google spreadsheet, Google  
video, or any of the endless Google tools, and they correlate  
everything about you. Google can read all of your emails, docs, and  
spreadsheets. By merely suppressing or enhancing results, they can  
make vast profits, erase careers, and literally control economies.  
This creates spectacular power. No company has ever been able to  
resist that kind of temptation.

Google needs an ombudsman? Definitely.



-------------------------------------------
Archives: http://v2.listbox.com/member/archive/247/=now
RSS Feed: http://v2.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/247/
Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com