Google and the Internet Bed it Made — Contortions of Justifying a Google Exemption From Principles
July 15, 2010
Google strongly legitimized the problem of “search neutrality” in arguing in detail in an FT op-ed today why Google’s search should not be neutral.
- The essence of Google’s search neutrality problem is that they are imploring everyone to do what they say, but not what they do.
- (And Google does have a very big problem when the New York Times writes an editorial: “The Google Algorithm“ questioning if Google’s search “leads us fairly to where we want to go.”
- Google’s search neutrality problem is also entirely of their own making.
- Google has constructed Google’s brand as the “Don’t be evil” world champion for neutrality, openness, transparency, and no censorship, on the Internet, when their public deeds to not square with the public representation of their brand values and their full-throated claims of being neutral, open, transparent, fair, or not being the “Ultimate Internet Gatekeeper.”
As one of the first to regularly document Google’s systematic hypocrisy of saying one thing and doing another, and demanding its competitors operate in ways Google is unwilling operate, it is important to address the sincerity of Google’s arguments against being subject to “search neutrality” by governments, as explained by Ms. Mayer, Google’s VP of Product and User Experience, in her FT op-ed: “Do not neutralise the web’s endless search.”
- Innovation: Google argues search neutrality mandates could stifle its innovation.
- However, Google has summarily dismissed that same innovation problem argument made by its competitors as the lead bankroller and lobbying force for the last four years behind the push for preemptive “net neutrality” mandates and Title II Telephone monopoly price and non-discrimination regulation for all broadband providers.
- Abuse: Google argues that antitrust oversight of search would lead to gaming of the algorithm and harming the consumer experience.
- Google’s argument is a straw man, as there are a number of internal controls, and third-party/Government oversight processes and procedures that could address anti-competitive or deceptive business practices without the full disclosure of Google’s trade secrets.
- Everyone knows there are business confidentiality rules the government follows that can easily address this Google concern.
- Commoditization: How can Google argue that an expectation that Google not use its monopoly power to discriminate against non-Google-owned content would result in commoditization, when Google argues that mandated monopoly non-discrimination regulation of its competitive broadband competitors would not result in commoditization?
- Consumer Choice: Google argues that antitrust oversight of the neutrality and fairness of its search results would undermine consumer choice and search competition.
- The problem is that, despite arguing that Google works for users, Google gets paid by advertisers and publishers — not users.
- Google has a standard “Competition is One Click Away” defense that is bogus because the anti-competitive problem results from the Internet Choice Paradox, where consumer have great choice of digital information providers, but digital information providers face a Google bottleneck in reaching the global Internet audience.
In sum, Google’s self-proclaimed “search neutrality” problem is entirely of its own making.
- It has been caught in its own “don’t be evil” net, and its own longstanding, well-documented, and principled public stances arguing for world neutrality, openness, transparency, and no censorship on the Internet.
Google’s bigger problem is that it has little credibility in arguing that all the rules that Google has sought to burden its competitors with should not apply fairly to Google, when Google is caught doing what Google has long argued is wrong.
- No PR contortions from Google’s legendary PR machine, can get people to support principles, laws, and regulations that apply to everyone… but Google.
Skype’s Net Neutrality Infidelity Scandal
July 14, 2010
Skype, one of the high priests of the net neutrality movement, that preaches for Title II monopoly regulation of all the broadband providers it already rides upon for free, has been caught in the act of being blatantly unfaithful to its widely-professed net neutrality principles, by blocking interconnectivity to Fring!
Arstechnica and The Hill have both flagged Skype’s hypocrisy and infidelity to its supposed net neutrality and openness principles in blocking mobile video calling competitor Fring from access to Skype’s dominant network of a ~half-billion interconnected users.Now we know that Skype’s proclaimed principled stance for net neutrality and openness was really just a cynical PR and lobbying campaign of crony capitalism, and political cover for an industrial policy where the FCC picks Skype, Google Android, and Amazon Kindle as the “dumb pipe” market winners, and all broadband providers as the “dumb pipe” market losers.
Skype’s “do as I say not as I do” stance is particularly hypocritical because of Skype’s dominant size relative to Fring, in that Skype has about a half billion users and is “responsible for 12% of global international calling minutes” per Skype.
To the exent that the FCC attempts to change existing net neutrality rules, at a minimum, they should continue to be technologically-neutral, given the FCC’s well-known abysmal track record in trying to choose technologies and pick market winners and losers over the last several decades.
It will be interesting to see if the FCC remains silent as one of the biggest complainers of non-neutral blocking — blocks a competitor non-neutrally — or if the FCC will investigate the Skype-Fring blocking affair.
And where is SaveTheInternet and FreePress when a dominant-size half-billion-user network like Skype does to the little guy what they supposedly claim to oppose on principle…
Must Read Thierer Op-ed: America’s Chavez Fan Club
July 13, 2010
Anyone that cares about freedom generally, and freedom of the press in particular, must read PFF Adam Theirer’s outstanding Big Government expose/op-ed putting the spotlight on neo-marxist “FreePress:” “How America’s Hugo Chavez Fan Club Plans to ‘Reform’ the Media Marketplace.”
- Adam’s analysis and case are brilliant and dead-on; FreePress has one of the most destructive public policy agendas out there, period, full stop.
- It is frightening how much credence this Administration, FCC, FTC and Congress give to FreePress’ anti-freedom-of-the-press dsytopian policy agenda.
Google has “human raters” in its search “algorithm”
July 13, 2010
Today Google publicly admitted for the first time that its purported “neutral” and “unbiased” search algorithm is not completely-automated or computer-algorithmic like Google has long and consistently represented to the public.
- In a stunning first-time disclosure in a Richard Waters FT article by “the Google engineer responsible for its ranking algorithm,” Mr. Amit Singhal:
- “Google’s Mr Singhal calls this the problem of “brand recognition”: where companies whose standing is based on their success in one area use this to “venture out into another class of information which they may not be as rich at”. Google uses human raters to assess the quality of individual sites in order to counter this effect, he adds.” [Bold added for emphasis.]
- From Google’s website:
- “Ten things we know to be true:” “We never manipulate rankings to put our partners higher in our search results and no one can buy better PageRank. Our users trust our objectivity and no short-term gain could ever justify breaching that trust.”
- Code of Conduct: “…But “Don’t be evil” is much more than that. Yes, it’s about providing our users unbiased access to information…” [bold added]
Now that Google has let slip that it does have some type of official human editorial board adjusting/manipulating/editing search results, we better understand:
- What Mr. Amit Singhal meant when he described Google to the UK Telegraph as “the biggest kingmaker on this earth; and
- Why Google SVP Jonathan Rosenberg said on the official Google Blog: “We won’t (and shouldn’t) try to stop the faceless scribes of drivel, but we can move them to the back row of the arena.”
Now that Google has publicly disclosed that Google employees do manually adjust/manipulate search rankings as part of the opaque “Quality Score” process that many companies have filed antitrust suits about ( TradeComet, MyTriggers, Foundem, ejustice.FR, Ciao, Navx, etc.), antitrust authorities should want to know how these “human raters” maintain objectivity and what internal controls are in place for this human process to not be abused anti-competitively given Google’s search advertising monopoly per the DOJ.
Key questions for antitrust authorities:
- What are the formal guidelines and decision criteria that this equivalent of a Search Discrimination Board (SDB) follows to try and remain neutral and unbiased, and prevent anti-competitive behavior?
- Does the SDB have any specific written internal controls and procedures that document its many discrimination decisions? Is there a formal Google process to ensure the overall integrity of this human rater discrimination process?
- Is the SDB transparent and do websites affected have any notification of how the SDB made its decision so there is due process to correct any factual mistakes?
- Is there any way an affected party can reach a human at Google to discuss the SDB’s ranking of their content?
- Can anyone appeal decisions of the SDB? What is the process and when are decisions final?
- Does Google or any independent third party monitor or audit the SDB’s deliberations to cross-check Google’s public representations of unbiased search results?
- Can antitrust plaintiffs subpoena records of the SDB’s deliberations?
- Are human raters involved in the ranking of political or religious websites? Are there any recusal procedures to ensure SDB human raters don’t have the appearance of a bias or conflict of interest?
- Does the SDB attempt to capture the neutral and unbiased views, values, and concerns of the U.S? or the country the search is conducted in?
- Are the same SDB members deciding the rank of non-Google-owned content, the ones that decide the ranking of Google-owned content? How is that conflict of interest disclosed and managed? Are Google’s top executives ever involved in how Google-owned content is ranked and if not why not?
- What is the criteria that the SDB uses to decide which news organization’s reports rank higher among sites like NYT, FT, WSJ, FT, AP, Reuters, Fox, CNN, etc?
- If links are a factor in determining the rank of content, and Google’s advertising revenue is derived from sites’ search rankings, how does Google ensure the human raters of the SDB are not influenced to reward Google-owned content or Google partners’ content that Google revenue shares with?
In sum, this first-ever disclosure by Google that “human raters” manually discriminate in the “quality scores” that determine a website’s supposed neutral and unbiased search ranking, exposes a rats nest of conflicts of interest that Google has in its “black box” business model. This is important because Google now is:
- The world’s de facto editorial filter by which Internet content gets found;
- The only revenue collector for most of the world’s websites; and
- The dominant gatekeeper for any business seeking to reach Internet users and websites; …and finally because…
- Google is publicly representing itself as neutral and unbiased in order to maintain the trust of users, advertisers, publishers, and Governments around the world.
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For more information see:
- Google kicks wrong beehive — IAC — which is now stinging over no search neutrality
- Monopolization Pattern behind Google-ITA — “It’s the data stupid!”
- French revolt against Google’s anti-competitive Guillotine
- Google: we’re “the biggest kingmaker on this earth” — Googleopoly Update
- www.Googleopoly.net
- www.GoogleMonitor.com
Randy May has must read post on media socialism
June 23, 2010
For anyone wanting to better understand the big picture threat to our Nation’s communications and media infrastructure/business models, please don’t miss Randy May’s outstanding post: “Not Mao Zedong or a communist… but a Socialist.”
Building on the great foundation of work laid down by Adam Theirer of the Progress and Freedom Foundation in this area, Randy adds another laser spotlight on how there are powerful ideological forces championed by FreePress’ leader Robert McChesney that seek ultimate government control of both the media and the communications infrastructure.
The disturbing common thread here that deserves much more attention from freedom-loving people everywhere, is the deeply (and scarily successful) anti-free-enterprise, anti-property, anti-individual-freedom efforts by FreePress in promoting a de facto government takeover of both the media and broadband communications infrastructure.
Look no further than the FCC’s proposal to turn the competitive free enterprise of the broadband sector into a de facto public utility over the objections of a majority of members of Congress.
If you want to learn and appreciate what is really going on ideologically here, don’t miss reading Randy’s and Adam’s important work on this. They are spot on.
