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To Break Google’s Monopoly on Search, Make Its Index Public

bloomberg.com

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Re: To Break Google’s Monopoly on Search, Make Its Index Public

#71

Post by phh »

taf2 wrote: post #54

So although everyone likes to believe google is a monopoly it’s far from it. You have choices- bing, biadu , yandex, DuckDuckGo... there is also nothing about googles search position that prevents you from building a competitor. What we do have is peter thiel backing an administration that’s anti google, Russia, China that are anti google. Why? it’s a source of truth that challenges their lies. We also have an emerge…

Carousel requiring (severely favoring?) AMP, requiring exclusively Google javascript/ads is definitely Googling using their advanced user base on search to favor their ad business.

They have already been condemned for their Google Shopping service for monopoly abuse on search.

Re: To Break Google’s Monopoly on Search, Make Its Index Public

#72

Post by __s »

ailideex wrote: post #62
taf2 wrote: post #54

So although everyone likes to believe google is a monopoly it’s far from it. You have choices- bing, biadu , yandex, DuckDuckGo... there is also nothing about googles search position that prevents you from building a competitor. What we do have is peter thiel backing an administration that’s anti google, Russia, China that are anti google. Why? it’s a source of truth that challenges their lies. We also have an emerge…

> What we do have is peter thiel backing an administration that’s anti google, Russia, China that are anti google. Can you provide some context? Article does not mention Thiel, Russia or China.

Foreign propaganda usually doesn't label itself as such. Nor does this article have to be from such a source. Merely inspired by the noise being made

Re: To Break Google’s Monopoly on Search, Make Its Index Public

#73

Post by ailideex »

iainmerrick wrote: post #7

I don’t see any mention in this article of what seems like the most obvious way to split up Google, separating their search and ad businesses. (Edit to add: although maybe the effect would end up being similar, if API users serve their own ads but without access to Google’s ad infrastructure.) That obviously wouldn’t be a simple job, of course, and maybe there are some interesting reasons why it wouldn’t work well.

> I don’t see any mention in this article of what seems like the most obvious way to split up Google, separating their search and ad businesses.

What would be the revenue model for their search then?

Re: To Break Google’s Monopoly on Search, Make Its Index Public

#75

Post by mhkool »

Bloomberg talks about 'making the index public' and the way to do it is with the API. But the API behaves like the website of Google and does not make the index of the website content available. Google's new AI-based algorithm is trained by humans with a strong bias. An example of this is the disappearance of website of respectable medical doctors who use non-mainstream methods. It is one thing to agree or disagree with someone, but completely dropping a website from search results is effectively censorship and who is Google to determine who sees what?

Re: To Break Google’s Monopoly on Search, Make Its Index Public

#76

Post by JumpCrisscross »

noahl wrote: post #61

Okay, this is a relatively serious proposal to require Google to allow API access to its search index, with the premise that it would democratize the search engine ecosystem. There are some issues with the regulations he proposes (you have to allow throttling to prevent DDoS attacks, and you can't let anyone with API access add content to prevent garbage results), but it's roughly feasible. The main problem is, I thi…

> most queries aren't in the long tail

But that's where differentiation occurs. Every search engine will get short tail results correct. We go back to Google because it also performs with the weird queries.

I agree that algorithmic superiority will probably perpetuate Google's dominance. But making its index public is (a) legally precedented, (b) conceptually simple and (c) a small step in the right direction.

Re: To Break Google’s Monopoly on Search, Make Its Index Public

#77

Post by JumpCrisscross »

ailideex wrote: post #73
iainmerrick wrote: post #7

I don’t see any mention in this article of what seems like the most obvious way to split up Google, separating their search and ad businesses. (Edit to add: although maybe the effect would end up being similar, if API users serve their own ads but without access to Google’s ad infrastructure.) That obviously wouldn’t be a simple job, of course, and maybe there are some interesting reasons why it wouldn’t work well.

> I don’t see any mention in this article of what seems like the most obvious way to split up Google, separating their search and ad businesses. What would be the revenue model for their search then?

> What would be the revenue model for their search then?

I read OP's proposal as separating Google search business (search + search ads) from its third-party ad business (e.g. AdSense).

Re: To Break Google’s Monopoly on Search, Make Its Index Public

#78

Post by detritus »

noahl wrote: post #61

Okay, this is a relatively serious proposal to require Google to allow API access to its search index, with the premise that it would democratize the search engine ecosystem. There are some issues with the regulations he proposes (you have to allow throttling to prevent DDoS attacks, and you can't let anyone with API access add content to prevent garbage results), but it's roughly feasible. The main problem is, I thi…

> Indexing the top billion pages or so won't take as long as people think.

This is what makes me wonder why we don't have a LOT of competing search engines. Perhaps i'm vastly under-estimating the technology and difficulty (I could well be - it's not my domain) but it surely it can't be THAT hard to spawn Google-like weighted crawl-based search results?

It's a long-since solved problem - heck, pageRank's first iteration recently came out of patent protection - it could just be copy'pastad. Why aren't all the big companies Doing Search?

Re: To Break Google’s Monopoly on Search, Make Its Index Public

#80

Post by jasode »

fouc wrote: post #49
peteretep wrote: post #3

I don’t want to break Google’s monopoly on search. Google’s search is fantastic. It’s their advertising business knowing too much about me I care about.

I think the better move is to find a way to kill the advertising business model that google relies on. If there's no advertising there's not as much need for all this data collection.

>the better move is to find a way to kill the advertising business model that google relies on. If there's no advertising there's not as much need for all this data collection.

What would be the alternative ad-free business model for Google to pay for its datacenters? Paid subscriptions?

I've been performing google searches for 20 years. In an alternate past universe... if I was paying $9.99/month for paywall access to their ad-free search engine, Google Inc would have more sensitive data collection about me -- not less. Google would have decades of my (sometimes embarassing) search history specifically tied to my paid account.

Ads can reduce privacy but they can also increase privacy by making explicit logins optional. (In other words, the anonymous google searches I did at the office during work are uncorrelated with the searches I do at home or at school. Without explicit Google account logins, the searches I do on my smartphone at Starbucks can be uncorrelated with the searches I do on the desktop at home.)

I don't like ads but the alternative ad-free revenue model is worse: Google Inc having my credit-card payment info (which means my real identity) and all my private search queries tied to it.

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