Recently the world’s most popular search engine, Google, has come under attack from a variety of angles. First there was the announcement that the European Union launched an antitrust investigation of Google’s business practices to see if it stands up to antitrust legislation. The EU is concerned that Google might be abusing its dominant position in the western search engine market to stifle competition.
The case was brought to light by a company called Foundem which claims that Google has deliberately skewed its search results to Foundem’s disadvantage. Foundem’s case is chronicled on the SearchNeutrality.org website.
Then another issue rose to the front: the increasing pollution of Google’s search results by webspam – low quality websites that abuse flaws in Google’s search algorithms to rank high. People who end up on these sites are shown ads (often Google’s own AdSense ads) which generate substantial revenue for both the owners of the webspam sites and the ad network.
Google is facing mounting criticism for its inability to filter these low quality webspam sites out of its search results. In response the company promised to fight webspam more effectively in coming months.
Most recently the issue of search neutrality in Google’s results – the focal point of the EU antitrust investigation – was fired up again when Ben Edelman, assistant professor at Harvard, published research that appeared to show that Google’s results do indeed show a bias towards its own services.
However Edelman’s research has come under substantial criticism, with some claiming it is deliberately misleading. Edelman does appear to have ulterior motives as he also consults for Microsoft (owner of rival search engine Bing) and is involved with a lawsuit against Google.
Edelman’s research. however flawed, did succeed in firing up the search neutrality debate once again. An essay by James Grimmelman (PDF), an associate professor of the New York Law School, tries to discredit the whole concept of search neutrality – and Google was quick to point out this essay in support of its own case – but this is unlikely to persuade Google’s critics.
Regardless of the merits of each case, it is clear that Google is coming under increasing scrutiny and criticism. As the world’s most popular search engine Google is in a position of great power, as it could quite easily shape public opinion and alter the course of corporations, even entire nations, through its search results. As the saying goes, with great power comes great responsibility.