Should the government regulate Google search results?
 

There's a very interesting discussion going on about whether or not the government should regulate search results. This begun earlier this week, when the New York Times ran an editorial titled, "The Google Algorithm", which suggests one way "to ensure the editorial policy guiding Google's tweaks is solely intended to improve the quality of the results and not to help Google's other businesses," is to "give some government commission the power to look at those tweaks."

Another way, the piece suggests could be for Google to "explain with some specified level of detail the editorial policy that guides its tweaks."

The piece was enough to not only get a response from long-time search industry reporter Danny Sullivan, via a clever, satirical look at the NYT piece itself (giving the publication something of a mirror to look into), but it was also enough to get Google to respond.

The rest here

http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/20...ers-question-t

Why should the government regulate how a company decides to do or conduct THEIR business? Fuck that. If you don't like the way they do it? Find another search engine and use it. There is only a bazillion of them out there.

More government interference is exactly what we need. Bring it on.

Yep thats the way its going and I was listening to the news on TV when they were talking about bringing in more regulation on the net over here in the UK because of things like that Raul Moat thing on Facebook

Yeah, because governments all over the planet cant even manage their countries. Lets have them have a go at google too :)

No, the government should stay the hell out of organic results.

However, google loves to put their own products in the #1 adsense spots for relevant keywords (example: Postini web filter). I'm torn on how I feel about this. One side of me understands that they have shitloads of money to pour into clicks. The realistic side of me realizes they aren't paying shit to peg their products at the top, making it unfair to other ad buyers.

Google is a business. It's not their fault if people blindly trust them to give an un-biased answer all the time instead of a loaded one.

Yes. The government should absolutely regulate search results. In fact, it should be added to the Patriot Act and implemented immediately. Anyone caught searching for terms not approved by the government should be locked up for life.

Lol whats unfair?

Using their own traffic to sell their own product?

Ok lets say they do regulate search results in the future ..what kind of impact would this have on porn sites ?

Searching for porn related material will likely be.... unauthorized.

It depends what people are searching for.

Should people be allowed to search for child porn?

Then you have a situation with bestiality, scat and other things that are illegal in a country.

Or is the Net above the law?

If so stop saying Tubes are illegal.

To get rid of them would take Government interference.

thats what im thinking will eventually happen if they do ever start to regulate search results You can alwyas rely on the goverment bringing in stupid laws like this to please the minority

Information shouldn't be filtered.... not all content is information, and content should be subject to filtering in some cases.

See this is something that would be very hard to regulate across the world as things that are illegal here in the UK might be legal in another country unless they "geo regulate it" somehow

But I think in the not to far future this will start to happen with search results as they try their hardest to censor the internet

Well I guess our goverments already censor information and content, not necessary on the net but whats to stop them from doing exactly the same on the net in the future

I'm sure it can be done if needed. Didn't China insist Google blocked some subjects?

Spot on, what makes the Internet so different that it should be a free for all. And a free for all is the last thing we want.

The trouble is if our goverments do decide they want to "filter" searches whos to say that they wont block out adult sites, it would be disastrous for the whole adult biz

Might be a a problem with the constitution with doing that.

And let's say it does happen. Do you really think it will stop people jerking off to porn on the Net?

It may well be in the US but not over here in the UK and many other EU countries. It would kill off a large portion of the adult industry(whats left of it) as so many surfers use Google as their primary search engine

Hell yeah. Why the fuck should we regulate any private business?

Oh yeah BP, got me there :Oh crap

I don't give a fuck if google puts their products/etc/whatever first in their search results... anything directly related to google is pretty much brilliant

What is pretty ridiculous however is the way that when you type <any of your websites name> into google, the suggestions typically suggest <said pornsite/digital software> torrent/rapidshare/hacked download/serial/etc.

It seems weird to me that google doesn't actively ban torrent sites, pirated sites, illegal sites, warez sites, etc, from their search engine. But I know exactly why they don't, it's because no one would use their 'shitty' search engine if it didn't include easy linkz to warez, free porn, free movies, etc.

Don't bet on it.



Yeah, to tube sites maybe.

Paul, please tell us that you're not really this fucking stupid.

You forgot about the the money Google make from these kinds of sites. I allways see google ads all over them yet we all support Google in one way or the other

I was in this business and making lots of money when the most you could show in the UK was open leg. Some pushed it a bit more and risked getting hauled into court. But men still jerked off to what they got and we still sold it to them.

No I'm not that stupid. In fact I have more experience of working in this market than most. You're stupid if you think the Government will resolve the issue of Porn Tubes and if banning certain items on Google. The porn buyer is far more resourceful than you imagine and if illegal content is enough to get a Tube site banned, go tell Youtube that.