Comments on: Search engines have same speech rights as the New York Times, says Google report

By: Alex

Alex — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 21:01:03 +0000

It is amazing how Google is trying to protect it’s morality-free-zone policy instead of turning it’s face to people around the globe and their needs.
How a morality-free algorithmic search can be considered as a “Good Samaritan” (a morality based term) – see CDA Section 230(c) rule, which allows Google to re-post defamatory content and rate such content at the top of it’s search results on someone’s name?
Now they have paid to Mr. Volokh to cover search results by the First Amendment … wait a second, but the First Amendment DOESN’T PROTECT defamatory /libelous statements at all!
Mr. Volokh in his article somehow forgets about basic HUMAN RIGHTS, granted by Article 12 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Article 17 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights – the International Laws, which supposedly were issued to protect ALL people around the globe!
Logically such International Treaties should supersede any Domestic Law, if the country signed and ratified them.
However, not in the US.

Robotic Search results are “just opinions” … how about the Three Laws of Robotics?

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.

Well, along with ICCPR Articles 1-27 they have no power in the US … and who cares about moral principles for robots, except of Isaac Asimov?

By: Will BrettCom

Will BrettCom — Thu, 24 May 2012 13:24:23 +0000

The economics of digital content might be in jepordy. Google has millions of dollars to purchase pay per click (PPC) advertising. In other words, Google can buy all available keyword searches for a particular search term. Everybody else would be left with virtually no way to attract leads.

By: fred

fred — Thu, 10 May 2012 17:37:43 +0000

In T-ball I learned the coach’s son always played no matter how bad. He set the lineup. Google sets the lineup. Search for cars – 30% of the real estate is displaying G+ stuff.

By: Fred

Fred — Thu, 10 May 2012 15:45:14 +0000

Yes, Volokh makes a strong case for Google as he was paid by Google.

Not surprising as their Lobbyist bill tripled last quarter.

Anyhow, Google is not reporting the news. They are a search engine which organizes all of the websites in the world. When you are looking for a product or service do you google it or do you hope that an ad will pop by on tv/radio? Globally 90% of people depend on Google to find them these websites and that number is growing as people move to mobile(which they own 97%). If Google decides to favor its own properties and 100% excludes other properties that is 100% anti-competitive. Sorry, that is illegal. So yes, the government would have the right to intervene.

Let’s say Safeway owned 90% of the supermarkets in the world. And then Safeway decided to only promote its products and started removing other companies’ products. How would those other companies compete? Is your argument that they should use the other 10% of the supermarkets? Or they should use mail-order? It would be impossible to compete. Startups & small businesses lose and the customer loses.

By: Bob

Bob — Thu, 10 May 2012 14:51:42 +0000

there is only one first page on google and it only has 10 results. if there are more than 10 competitors, someone is going to “have their first amendment rights violated” by being on page 2 or lower. despite what you learned as a kid in t-ball, not everyone comes in first. thats just math.

By: dailydemotivators

dailydemotivators — Thu, 10 May 2012 08:27:39 +0000

If they say that SERPs are just “opinion” that implies they can freely manipulate it, because hey – it’s just an opinion (and that’s what can see EU or SK – that Google can manipulate it’s SERPs). Only in USA telling that SERP is an “opinion” is considered normal. In the rest of the world you can’t say that result of an algorithm is an opinion, because it’s not.

Besides manual penalties are manual manipulation of SERPs – and Google does it (and they say “we can not manipulate our rankings”). In USA now it will be OK, because it’s just an “opinion” – so they can do whatever they want, however telling so in EU will put them deeper into trouble becuse they will freely admit that they can manipulate their SERPs (as You can freely manipulate opinion – it doesn’t matter what definition in USA “opinion” has – it does matter what definition “opinion” has in EU).

By: Jeff John Roberts

Jeff John Roberts — Thu, 10 May 2012 03:50:52 +0000

Fred, in the past Google would argue that competitors can advertise on other search engines like Bing or on other platforms like TV or Facebook. Now, it is also saying that the government can’t tell a search engine how to run its algorithm any more than it can dictate the content of a newspaper (no matter how dominant). Volokh makes a strong case but it will be interesting to see what others (including the Justice Department) think

By: fred

fred — Thu, 10 May 2012 00:17:24 +0000

I don’t think that argument is going to work well. If someone owned 80% of print/tv media and didn’t allow Subway or McDonald’s to advertise on their properties, the government would intervene. I am positive of that. How is this different?

By: Bob Bigellow

Bob Bigellow — Wed, 09 May 2012 14:51:57 +0000

And this is exactly why I *don’t* use DuckDuckGo. I *want* the search engine to recognize what I’m looking for and to get smarter about search. I don’t want to use a search engine that has Alzheimer’s.

By: Bob Bigellow

Bob Bigellow — Wed, 09 May 2012 14:50:12 +0000

Where did you read that they manually manipulate search results? What’s being said here is that their engineers wrote the algorithm and there’s no use in the government intervening with that algorithm. If people think someone else’s algorithm is better, then people can use that one instead.