[LINK] Warning on search engines: no competition breeds bias

[Viveka]

At 9:25 AM +1000 23/10/02, Bernard Robertson-Dunn wrote:
>http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/10/20/1034561357439.html
>
>A trend towards a search-engine hegemony is as disastrous to democracy as
>concentration of media assets, according to a US study.
[snip]
>"Elimination of competition in the search-engine business is just as
>problematic for a democratic society as consolidation in the news media,"
[snip]
>No engine was able to find the brand names of all 13 popular brands of US
>fridges.

And this lack of unbiased fridge-brand-name information is a threat 
to democracy exactly how? I think we have a new variant on the old 
prank call:

Caller: Hello, this is Ed Freeks calling from Fridigaire. Is your 
fridge running?
Respondent: Yes...
Caller: For congress, or the senate?

>Yahoo! and Google, and Hotbot and Goto had mostly identical
>results. Looksmart recorded the lowest number of hits, returning just
>Frigidaire, Maytag and Roper, but missing GE and Whirlpool among the 10
>others.

This looks like a simple case of unique words being easier to find 
than generic words. Frigidaire is a unique invented word, whereas the 
two letters "ge" and the English word "whirlpool" will be found in 
many non-fridge-related contexts.

I can see some merit in the premise, but the study seems a little weak.

V.
-- 
Viveka Weiley, Karmanaut.
{ http://www.karmanaut.com | http://www.planet-earth.org
    http://www.MacWeb3D.org | http://sydney.siggraph.org.au }
Hypermedia, virtual worlds, human interface, truth, beauty.
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