Google the popular search engine is facing a patent
infringement suit from Overture (Formerly goto.com) on paid listing of sites.
The paid system of listing enables web sites to make a
certain payment based on which the website URL will be appearing at the
top of the search listings. The registrations will be based on certain
"Keywords".
It is true that Google happens to be the most popular
search engine at present and its services are good. Some time back, its "Cache"
service where the pages would be displayed from an archive was questioned by
Copyright enthusiasts . At that point of time, the Net Community was in support
of Google because the service had a value for them.
In the present instance however, Google may not have the
sympathies of the Net Community since their service for paid listing goes
against the ethics of search services.
As we already know, many search engines have a service where
by, upon certain payment, whenever a consumer uses a key word for search, along
with the search results, the "Advertisements" registered with the key word would
be displayed in the designated place. This key word based advertisement
itself ran into "Trade Mark" related problems where the trade mark owners tried
to prevent registration of their trade marks for display of ads by their
competitors. Leaving aside the trade mark issue, the ads were considered as a
revenue support for the service to be kept free and therefore the Netizens had
no reason to complain.
Presently what Google is proposing is unethical since the
paid listings appear not as an "Advertisement" but as a search result
output itself. Even though the words "Sponsored Link" appears along with the
search result, the format of display is not sufficiently distinguished from the
rest and are therefore likely to be confused as the most popular listing rather
than an advertisement.
More over, as the money power takes over, it is likely that
there will be not just one sponsored link per key word but there will be many.
If there are ten or twenty sponsored links for a key word, they would
effectively occupy the entire first page of results display pushing the other
more relevant listings to the back pages.
The popularity of Google in the first place was because of
the perception that its results are "Relevant". If this confidence is lost, the
basic strength of Google would have been compromised. For any search engine to
call itself a search engine, "Content" should be the key to listing and nothing
else. In order to over come the challenges in identifying the right content
electronically, search engines such as Google might have invented new search
algorithms and achieved better results than others. Even such algorithms such as
"Hyperlinking popularity" etc fit into the logic of trying to find out the
content quality. There is scope to improve upon this sort of algorithms to make
the search engines more and more useful to the Netizens.
If Google compromises on its basic objective to provide
"Relevant Links", then it is likely to be the beginning of the end of Google's
popularity.
It would therefore be better if Google resorts to the "Key
word advertising model" with sponsored links appearing as "Banner Ads" than
showing them along with the genuine search results. Perhaps the Patent
infringement suit would drive Google to adopt this policy which is more
palatable to the consumers.
Naavi
April 8, 2002
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