What we need is another search engine that isn't under the control of any one group. I'm not sure how this would be possible though, but with how these companies have caved in with censorship, we need a search engine that can't be controlled in such a way, like the internet can not be controlled effectively. I really have no idea how this could be achieved but having the search engines under the control of these corporations has proven bad for the interests of the public, well the Chinese public at the momen
by Anonymous Coward writes:
on Thursday February 16, 2006 @11:00PM (#14739249)
The problem is you actually do want control of the search engine by one group. The reason for this is that search engines are not about finding a source for information. Search engines are about finding an authoritative source for information. If you just want sites about "skiing", well, there are thirty thousand of those. When you search, you want to pick the ten most important. Which are those? Well, we don't want our search under the control of any one group, so let's solve this democratically. What groups might be able to tell us what skiing sites are important? Well, there's thirty thousand authoritative sources on the subject of skiing right here, the skiing sites themselves, and every single one of them thinks they are the most important one.
Wait, that doesn't work at all. We now have thirty thousand equally important answers to our query, where we only wanted ten. What now?
The internet itself serves the goal of information sources not under the control of any one group. This is not what you want out of a search engine. Search engines assume information sources are plentiful, and attempt to provide a single, authoritative source which provides a singular value judgement as to which sources are most important. This value judgement cannot work democratically, because the information sources have a vested interest in promoting their information sources over other information sources whether their value is greater or not.
The only way to reconcile the philosophical desire for decentralization with the inherently centralized nature of search engines is to create projects which exist to collaboratively rate many sources. This goal is currently served by projects like dmoz, digg or stumbleupon. They unfortunately are only able to catalog a very small portion of the internet, because the raters are human beings, not robots like those that create the google index.
Another search engine is needed. (Score:4, Insightful)
I really have no idea how this could be achieved but having the search engines under the control of these corporations has proven bad for the interests of the public, well the Chinese public at the momen
The problem is (Score:3, Interesting)
Wait, that doesn't work at all. We now have thirty thousand equally important answers to our query, where we only wanted ten. What now?
The internet itself serves the goal of information sources not under the control of any one group. This is not what you want out of a search engine. Search engines assume information sources are plentiful, and attempt to provide a single, authoritative source which provides a singular value judgement as to which sources are most important. This value judgement cannot work democratically, because the information sources have a vested interest in promoting their information sources over other information sources whether their value is greater or not.
The only way to reconcile the philosophical desire for decentralization with the inherently centralized nature of search engines is to create projects which exist to collaboratively rate many sources. This goal is currently served by projects like dmoz, digg or stumbleupon. They unfortunately are only able to catalog a very small portion of the internet, because the raters are human beings, not robots like those that create the google index.