[WEB4LIB] RE: More on Google going commercial

[Walt_Crawford at notes.rlg.org]

Bruce et al,

But the point is precisely that Google is trying to survive *without*
selling their souls in the form of placement subterfuge.

If we (the library community) can't distinguish between

a. Ability to survive
and
b. Subversion of ethics

then we're all in serious, serious trouble.

Google is a private concern. They have taken clearly-labeled,
clearly-differentiated steps to be profitable (aka survive).

Those steps clearly do not involve hidden "relevance" placements. Google's
people have even gone on record as saying that they see ethics as being one
of their competitive advantages.

If we (the library community, again) simply say "Commercial: Bad,
unethical." then you can kiss Google goodbye--and anyone else trying to do
a proper job of indexing the unindexable.

The Gummint isn't going to step in with a billion or two to provide Pure
Noncommercial Indexing. Neither is anyone else.

Lumping all "commercialization" together works great in a thriving,
survivable, rights-respecting, intellectually-free wholly-socialist
economy. But I don't know of any instantiation of that model. Short of
that, I think we need to make distinctions between making money and selling
out your ethics.

Walt Crawford


                                                                                                                        
                    "Abbott, Bruce"                                                                                     
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                    01/02/2002 12:04                                                                                    
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Another major problem with commercialization of web search engines is that
sponsor sites have their listings moved to the top of the retrieval list.
As it is, the algorithms which determine the relevance of a given search
are
not available for examination by the searcher.  With commercial sponsors,
retrieval can be skewed by factors which have little to do with the
relevance to a given search.

Bruce Abbott
Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center Library
433 Bolivar St.
New Orleans, LA  70112

504-568-7718 (fax)
504-568-6103 (voice)
babbot at lsuhsc.edu