google's conflict of interest

7/29/2019 Google's conflict of interest

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Why there is a need for a good non-profit internet search engine

By Glen Wallace

The following is a copy of a blog post I wrote on my blog on blogger.com:

When one thinks of how nice it is for just about anyone with a an internet account

to become a published author, there are some assumptions involved that may not be

entirely true. If we think of the term 'publish' as being 'to make public' or 'tomake publicly available' then in the strictest sense that is true but what one has

in mind by the idea of 'publicly available' and the reality of the relationship

between one's work that one thinks is now 'in the public' may be significantly

different. If some other member of the public does a search on the internet in a

quest to find ideas about the subject that you wrote about and made public by

publishing on the internet outside of any publishing house, then you might tend to

think that that other person would not have too much difficulty coming across your

work upon doing that search. My contention, however, is that the difficulties

encountered by that other person in finding your work, unless they already knew the

exact title of your work, can be so considerable that in many cases the stranger

doing the search will be highly unlikely to come across your work. Now, compare

such an internet search to someone doing a search at a public or university library

using the libraries card catalog system of organization. Such a library search

would be many orders of times easier to search and would come across a variety of

works that the searcher may be entirely unfamiliar with as compared to doing an a

comparable search for the same ideas or information on the internet using an

internet search engine. And I don't think it is just a matter of the internet

having a higher quantity of works, but rather I believe the libraries card catalog

is so much more organized that doing a search in what would supposedly be a very

antiquated system still provides a much higher quality search experience compared

to doing an internet search using an internet search engine.

In my opinion the search results using google or any other for-profit search

engine yields very messy results. What is returned is just one big hodge podge of

different categories of websites from shopping sites to encyclopedias to newspapers

to entertainment fluff to university professors' papers. However, one trend that I

did notice when searching for a subject like 'communism' is that the search resultsseemed moreso skewed towards Wikipedia type descriptive entries rather than what

some might classify as opinion piece like my essay on communism. In my essay I

tried to look at the subject of communism from a new, unique and inciteful angle

that I think might open some minds to the possibility that maybe communism is not

only not that bad after all but in some respects it is downright utopian in nature.

Which leads me to wonder if that is why it is so hard to find my

essay 'The freedom that communism brings' -- could it be that the giant corporate

behemoth Google can see in my work a potential for a burgeoning meme that could

eventually result in a complete overthrow of the capitalistic empire and all those

behemoth corportate giants like Google? But regardless, it is still my contention

that Google search results are a disorganized mess where one looking at the results

will have a hard time sifting through to find the sorts of sites that they have inmind. Any search engine should have some basic operators as part of the search

that through the searches selections, categorize ahead of time the kinds of results

the searcher is looking for whether it be purely factual, opinion, do it yourself

instructions, helpful hints, fiction, scientific, pop-science, or philosophical.

I'm thinking also that maybe what the search engine itself searches could be

categorized in a manner similar to or even identical with the old library standard,

the Dewey Decimal System.

I was thinking how nice it would be to have a non-profit internet search engine

available. My impetus for that wish started by looking at the view numbers for



this very blog. This blogging website provides a nice feature called 'stats' where

the blog's creator can view the number of views for each posting on one's blog.

Well, my stats in terms of the number of views is rather paltry. While I've been

blogging with some regularity for about one year now with a total of about 30

published posts, I've only received around 800 total visits to my blog over the

course of that year. But when looking at the number of views for each published

essay and add them all up the total number of view is much lower still -- maybe

around 150. And I think the views per post gives a more accurate picture of number

of real people actually interested in what I've written and accessing my blog froma search on the topic I've written about in a published post here. So that got me

thinking and wondering how difficult it is to find my essays on this blog if I do a

Google search for the keywords covered in my essays here. Well, I found it rather

difficult indeed. Now keep in mind I wasn't looking for a confirmation of any

conspiracy theory from the start. I know how large the content of the internet is

and how easy it is for that content to get 'lost' in the mass of internet 'noise.'

But even after doing some advanced searches where I entered all my keywords along

with limiting the results to items published within the shorter time frame that my

post I was searching for was published within, on at least one search I couldn't

find a link to my essay anywhere in all the results that were returned from the

google search.

In supposedly helping make it easier for one's posts to be found by a search

engine blogger.com offers something called 'labels' where the author of the blog

post can write in some keywords the author thinks are relevant to what he or she

has just written and someone who wants to find the relevant essay in a internet

search can hopefully do so by typing in some of those label keywords into an

internet search engine such as Google.com. So I searched for those keywords that I

had already entered and published in the 'labels' field some days before my search,

presumably giving the search engines bots plenty of time to crawl to the post, note

those keywords and make my essay available to be found based on someone searching

for those keywords. And yet I was entirely unsuccessful in finding my own post

after searching using all of what should have been the right words to enter in that

search to find my essay. I didn't think that would happen, I wasn't looking for a

conspiracy but I'm left to wonder if maybe I have found one. You may have already

guessed where I'm headed with this -- could it be that my posts are being

deliberately hidden from search engines because of the nature of the content of myposts? Perhaps you may be thinking that I am just flattering myself by thinking

little old me with no prestigious titles or academic or literary reputation, could

be considered important enough that the words I present need to be effectively

censored from widespread public access. Well maybe I am flattering myself, but the

power of the written word still is very great and reason itself is a great

equalizer that doesn't recognize titles, prestige or awards. Memes can be just as

effectively infectious in a positive way coming from someone with no prestige as

someone with a great deal of it. That is because it is the idea itself that takes

on a life of its own as a meme in a way that the intellectual milieu of the very

culture with the propensity to forge a sea-change in the sociopolitical governance

that guides the direction of society. And a theme can be found through many of my

essays here of what some might construe as anti-capitalist. While whether or not

those posts where anti-capitalism or not is a matter of question, but I certainlycan see where someone who does not want to see the principles of capitalism and

what they see as a 'free market' tarnished might want to take measures to prevent

my essays from being viewed by anyone who might be influenced by my essays in

manner where the ideas presented therein might be spread in an exponential manner

on into the collective conscious and unconscious of the society at large. One

interesting tidbit is that the website I've been blogging on, blogger.com, is owned

by the Google Corporation. I believe blogger.com started as an independent

organization that was subsequently bought by Google Corporation. Which makes me

wonder, why did they really buy Blogger.com? Was it for the ad revenue or did they

want an easy access to the idea generators out there like myself that they wanted



to be able to keep a close eye on and easily block from search results if they so

desire? One must keep in mind that Google is a publicly traded corporation and as

such must abide by certain rules and laws that all public traded businesses must

follow. One of the most important rules, I believe it is a law actually, is that a

corporation must act in the best financial interest of the shareholders of that

companies stock. Just imagine what would happen to the value of Google stock if

the ideas I have presented in the essays I've published here were to be implemented

into the governance of the U.S.? I think it is safe to say that Google owns a great

number of patents and thus enjoys the revenue from those patents. If patents wereto suddenly disappear, those revenues that Google currently enjoys from them will

correspondingly also disappear. In one of the essays I have written, I openly

advocated for the abolishment of patent protection. If my arguments in that essay

convinced enough people, then maybe patent protection would finally end and with

that, presumably so would go the gravy train Google currently receives from they

patents it already owns. I have also written essays that have advocated for the

expansion of a form of communism as a replacement for the current form of

capitalistic tyranny we all suffer under. Let's face it, Google has grown into a

behemoth of a corporation with a market cap as of this writing at 262 billions

dollars. That's a lot of dollars riding on the success of a corporation that has

grown to that size largely by tapping into a capitalistic system of commerce by

matching up buyers and sellers of goods and services for the private enjoyment of

the purchaser of those goods and services. It is hard to tell what the effect of

the implementation of my ideas could possibly have on their program of revenue if

my ideas were implemented by law, but since I do advocate for less capitalism and

more communism, I think there is reason to believe my ideas, if implemented, might

have a detrimental effect on Google's ad revenue. In a capitalistic system of

commerce, the goal is to seek out profits, not benefit mankind. In my essays I

advocate for breaking down barriers that have been set up by capitalism for its

benefit but have been disguised as being for societies benefit. Those barriers

include the patent monopoly protection and our entire system of mainstream

medicine. If those barriers were removed then a lot of industries would lose an

enormous amount of revenue. If I did a Google search for, for instance, patent

lawyers, I'm sure I would find an abundant number of enhanced search results with

ads to the top and to the right of the search results screen for patent lawyers

hawking their services to those doing patent law searches. If patent protection

would entirely disappear, then presumably there would be no need for patent lawyersanymore and as a result there would no longer be any patent lawyers buying ads from

google any longer either. That revenue would completely disappear for Google if my

recommendation for the elimination of patent protection was implemented.

While Google may have the motto "don't be evil" I don't find that motto any more

reassuring than I am reassured by Asimov's '3 Laws of Robotics.' The value of the

motto and those laws are only as good as the fallible humans that run the

corporation or build the robots. In a way the corporation that Google now is, is

similar in some ways to a robot -- a revenue seeking robot that the builders and

maintainers of which are required by real laws of the land to look after the

financial interests of the shareholders but I'm not aware of anything in those laws

of the land about "not being evil" or following Asimov's robot laws.

Ok, I had put this essay on the 'back burner' for a while thinking that maybe I

was exaggerating things. Since I had written this piece (and saved it here but not

published it) I did some more searches using Google and had a little more success.

And my stat numbers were looking ever so slightly better. But after my most recent

published post that to date is my longest one yet, and one of what I thought was

one of my more important posts about the failings of the moonshot for cancer

program I had only received a grand total of 2 hits to that essay. Usually I

quickly get at least 3 visits within a day even if after that for a lot of my

essays there is a plateau and may stay at just 3 visits. But for the moonshot

essay it took the full day to reach 2 views. Before then there was just one view.



So I did a search for some of the keywords in that essay; both 'SU2C' and 'Moon

Shot' and in separate searches on google that were narrowed down to searching for

sites that had been updated within a week, I did not get a single search result

linking to my moonshot essay! Are the people at Google trying to mess with me? Or

am I just flattering myself to think that anyone at such a giant corporation as

Google would go out of their way to keep people from finding my blog because of the

anti-capitalism arguments that are often found on the essays on my blog? Ok, I

just did a word for word Google search without quotes of the title of one of my

blog posts and I am to page 22 of the search results and I have yet to see my essaycome up. Instead I am seeing a great myriad of different combinations of those

search terms scattered about in the tittles and content of the websites in the

results. The only way I can get my essay to come up is to put the title in quotes

and then only my blog comes up and no other results for any other web sites.

Well, I guess I got a little sidetracked and haven't yet started talking

specifically about what this piece was intended in the first place. While there is

a popular non-profit browser called Firefox, and a popular non profit website that

offers public domain items that can be streamed or downloaded called Archive.org,

why is there no non-profit internet search engines? (Well I just recently have been

making some effort to find some non-profit open source search engines and have been

largely unsuccessful at least in terms of finding anything like a non-profit

equivalent of Google.com where someone could go to a web page and punch in a few

terms and see a listing of other web pages that supposedly reflect or match your

search. While there does appear that some individuals have made an effort to start

something similar to what I have in mind, I'm still not finding any working web

site that is comes very close to what I have conceptualized.) It seems like if

ever there was a need for a non-profit in the world of the internet it would be in

the form of a search engine. After all, Chrome and Internet Explorer are not

really any worse at opening a non-profit or communist website than Firefox. It's

not as though when one tries to go to Archive.org using Google's Chrome browser to

legally download public domain movies or music, that some screen pops up saying

something like "wouldn't you rather go to Amazon or Netflix to download the latest

releases for nominal fee?" Nothing like that happens at all if you use a browser

built by a for-profit software company. But it seems like to make the most out of

the internet as a free exchange of ideas from across the world, an impartial search

engine without a conflict of interest as a median of idea exploration would bepreferable the current search engine choices. As it is, you can decide between a

variety of for-profit search engines, it is like if you had a radio station and you

were told you had a selection because you could choose between one of the two

stations -- either the country station or the western one.

It is rather hard to tell what the algorithm Google uses to determine which

websites get top billing in any given search result such that the top billed site

ends up at or near the top of any search result listing for any given search , or

in my case whether my blog gets any billing whatsoever. I think Google keeps there

search algorithms as a very closely guarded secret. That kind of secrecy just

raises the suspicions of a conspiracy theorist like myself. Now I wouldn't

necessarily have problems with such secrecy if the algorithm was just for commerce

searches where the determination was for what sites end up near the top of anyone'sshopping search result. But I do have a problem with Google as a de facto internet

search engine that keeps secret the reasons why the search results come up as they

do for all information and ideas on the internet whether or those ideas or

information are being put forth for commercial purposes or just because someone

like me is trying to create a better world through their ideas.

google's conflict of interest

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