[nknighthb]

Government bureaucrat. I don't care if Google, Microsoft, or whoever else has humans who directly modify search results. I'm free to choose among the competing search engines based on the value they provide me.

Any external notion of correctness imposed industry-wide will destroy that choice.

[dreamfactory]

I wasn't talking about anyone outside google, just critiquing the game being rigged internally, but it's maybe interesting you brought that in.

On the one hand that could be criticised as an illusion of choice in the market (behind the curtain there is often ownership across entire industry sectors, regardless of 'competitors' within a sector). On the other, governments quite correctly get a say in any case (what do we representatively govern otherwise - the alternative is to cede governance to global corporations). Google is particularly sensitive to the latter as it has a huge de facto monopoly and has become part of our infrastructure - it is absolutely a huge target for regulation wherever it has traction.

Talking of competition, is there anything viable in the shape of an open source effort where the algorithms and indexes could be crowd-managed - perhaps indexing via browser plugins?

[nknighthb]

> has become part of our infrastructure

I think a comment[1] I wrote a couple months ago about Facebook is relevant here.

Infrastructure is what services are built on. It's a prerequisite, not the end result, and its absence is extremely costly.

Google is not infrastructure[2]. Like Facebook, it could disappear tomorrow, and we'd all just switch to other search engines. I assume Bing would immediately pick up most of the users, either directly or via Yahoo. I wouldn't like it as much, but I would not be materially harmed.

Google has done nothing to make it harder for someone else to build a search engine except raise the bar for quality. It has a better product for most people, so it has the most users. That's how it's supposed to work.

Using Google's popularity as an excuse for regulation is nothing but a demand for mediocrity. It's saying good things aren't allowed to exist, and that people shouldn't have the right to choose (or make) better products.

It's saying "CONFORM!".

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6621525

[2] Well, Google does offer something closer to actual infrastructure of course, in the form of their App Engine/Compute Engine offerings, but they're even less dominant in that field.

[dreamfactory2]

I think what google provide has become societal infrastructure, particularly wrt their monopoly position. That someone else would take their place (however badly executed) is evidence of that. We use it for studying, planning journeys, shopping, finding news, converting measures etc etc. In the process it's taken a position of political and economic importance. It makes a difference to us if google suppresses or boosts certain information and can influence our electorate during an election (e.g. many countries ban publication of exit polls); it affects the courts if certain information is made easily available (e.g. can prejudice trials); economic data and editorial affects the financial markets - and so on. If one player dominates this sphere, it is problematic - indeed it's why there are limits on media ownership. That's nothing to do with a demand for mediocrity but a demand for diversity, which is already well established. And yes companies very much need to conform to the countries they want to do business in - that's a good thing for the citizens of those countries.

[nknighthb]

This is what I just heard you say: Regulation is needed because people might exercise free expression.

Do you have any idea how evil that sounds? If that is the argument, this is my answer: I will take up arms and die fighting to prevent the realization of such a goal.

Media ownership limits are justified only because of a resource scarcity. They do not apply to Internet publications, and with search engines, all I have to do is type in a different domain name. There's no spectrum to be monopolized.

[dreamfactory2]

That's disingenuous - I was talking about the normal limits on free expression (shouting 'fire' in the theater) and gave some concrete examples. Surely you're not suggesting it is viable for a foreign company to undermine a country's judiciary in the name of it's 'free expression'? (And let's not pretend that Google is following a social or cultural mission rather than a business one.)

Media ownership limits are about market monopolies, not scarcity, newspapers being a prime example.

[nknighthb]

Those are not "normal limits" in the United States, and I do not believe they should be "normal limits" anywhere.

If it undermines a country's judiciary for information about crimes to be published, that country's judiciary needs to be undermined. Once information has leaked beyond law enforcement officials, there is not and should not be anything anyone can do to prevent its spread.

I don't care what mission Google is on. Rights are not dependent on motive.

Newspaper ownership limits exist only in relation to broadcast station ownership. There are no separate limits on newspaper ownership.