Re:The world needs a non-profit search engine
by marginalia_nu on Sunday July 10, 2022 @09:00AM
(#32044318)
I think this is mostly a problem if you are in Google's position, near total market dominance.
This not only means you exert massive selection pressure on the shape of websites. The SEO spammers don't need to be good or know what they are doing, they just need to be lucky once. If they get it right, they float to the top, and can iterate on that design. This effectively is saying that no matter how secret or smart your algorithms are, it doesn't matter if you're in Google's position. The numbers are stacked against you.
To make matters worse, any company with that sort of a market share has serious handcuffs in how heavy handed and "unfair" you can be without risking litigation for anti-competitive practices.
I think the best thing that could happen for Google is ironically serious competition in the search market. This would help both problems at once.
This not only means you exert massive selection pressure on the shape of websites. The SEO spammers don't need to be good or know what they are doing, they just need to be lucky once. If they get it right, they float to the top, and can iterate on that design. This effectively is saying that no matter how secret or smart your algorithms are, it doesn't matter if you're in Google's position. The numbers are stacked against you.
To make matters worse, any company with that sort of a market share has serious handcuffs in how heavy handed and "unfair" you can be without risking litigation for anti-competitive practices.
I think the best thing that could happen for Google is ironically serious competition in the search market. This would help both problems at once.