Google says:
But that's just the tip of the hypocrisy iceberg, in my opinion. Google has about 60% of search traffic. Some significant percentage of people use Google exclusively as their gateway to the Internet. If a Web site is not in the Google index, that content is literally invisible to these people. In that case, Google has effectively used "their market power to discriminate against competing applications or content."
I presume Google might say to that, "well, anyone can switch search engine providers." Yet by the same token, most people can switch broadband providers. I realize not everyone can, but the % of people who can is high and increasing. I have 4 independent choices now (cable, dsl, fiber, and wireless) at my house.
Additionally, the argument that anyone can switch search engine providers easily has issues. First off, a lot of people still don't really understand what a search engine is, that there are multiple providers, who they are, and how to switch. And I would presume that a lot of these people are the same people that use Google exclusively. Someone set up Google as their homepage some years ago, and it hasn't budged since. To some of these people, Google is their access to the Internet even more so in their minds than their broadband provider.
Furthermore, Google has zero transparency when it comes to why parts of a domain or even an entire domain is in or out of their index. Plenty of small businesses have just woken up one day to find their search traffic from Google gone, for a completely unknown reason. Plenty of others have had to wait months or years to be included in the index at all, even though Google has crawled their pages countless times.
Now I am not suggesting that Google should be forced to include every domain and page in their index. Nor am I suggesting they become more transparent, or be forced to do anything for that matter. I am simply pointing out that IMHO their insistence that broadband carriers do not content discriminate and allow people to get to all sites seems very hypocritical when they themselves content discriminate and do not let people get to all sites.
Does this suggest net neutrality is unworkable? No, I don't think so. (I still don't have a strong opinion on net neutrality btw.) I just think if Google is going to argue in favor of it, they should do it themselves. What would that entail? For starters:
What do you think? Is Google hypocritical on net neutrality?
Network neutrality is the principle that Internet users should be in control of what content they view and what applications they use on the Internet.This translates, in Google's opinion, to:
A couple years ago (in 2006), Amnesty International accused the major search engines of hypocrisy on net neutrality because of their activities censoring content in China. At least one telecom exec repeated the accusation.
In [Google's] view, the broadband carriers should not be permitted to use their market power to discriminate against competing applications or content.
But that's just the tip of the hypocrisy iceberg, in my opinion. Google has about 60% of search traffic. Some significant percentage of people use Google exclusively as their gateway to the Internet. If a Web site is not in the Google index, that content is literally invisible to these people. In that case, Google has effectively used "their market power to discriminate against competing applications or content."
I presume Google might say to that, "well, anyone can switch search engine providers." Yet by the same token, most people can switch broadband providers. I realize not everyone can, but the % of people who can is high and increasing. I have 4 independent choices now (cable, dsl, fiber, and wireless) at my house.
Additionally, the argument that anyone can switch search engine providers easily has issues. First off, a lot of people still don't really understand what a search engine is, that there are multiple providers, who they are, and how to switch. And I would presume that a lot of these people are the same people that use Google exclusively. Someone set up Google as their homepage some years ago, and it hasn't budged since. To some of these people, Google is their access to the Internet even more so in their minds than their broadband provider.
Furthermore, Google has zero transparency when it comes to why parts of a domain or even an entire domain is in or out of their index. Plenty of small businesses have just woken up one day to find their search traffic from Google gone, for a completely unknown reason. Plenty of others have had to wait months or years to be included in the index at all, even though Google has crawled their pages countless times.
Now I am not suggesting that Google should be forced to include every domain and page in their index. Nor am I suggesting they become more transparent, or be forced to do anything for that matter. I am simply pointing out that IMHO their insistence that broadband carriers do not content discriminate and allow people to get to all sites seems very hypocritical when they themselves content discriminate and do not let people get to all sites.
Does this suggest net neutrality is unworkable? No, I don't think so. (I still don't have a strong opinion on net neutrality btw.) I just think if Google is going to argue in favor of it, they should do it themselves. What would that entail? For starters:
- Don't delete domains from your index. You already use penalization schemes that rank things to the bottom of search results. That should be enough. Actually deleting it really does make it like the site doesn't exist for some non-negligible amount of people.
- Be more transparent about why things got deleted from your index, or are still not in it. A simple response code would be a good start.
- If you type whatever.com into Google, and there are no results but you know it exists, put a link to that domain up.
What do you think? Is Google hypocritical on net neutrality?
