Search Engine Middlemen
There was a really interesting post by Nicholas Carr on his blog a few days ago. The post was about the influence of Google, particularly as it relates to the news media. He basically points out that Google is a “very, very large middleman” that stands between us and the information or product we’re searching for.
This got me thinking about how this relates to the rest of the online world, particularly commercial sites that sell a product or service. As Carr points out, the Internet was originally billed as an equalizer, something that put everyone on the same level. Living in a capitalistic society, I’m not sure that was ever a real possibility but it was a great promise. Now that the Internet has pervaded our everyday life (generally for the good) it’s clear that it doesn’t place everyone on a level field. Sure anyone can start up a website and start selling their wares, but without cooperating with the search engines that website will have a tough time drawing traffic.
I’m certainly not suggesting that the search engines are evil, they provide a very valuable service. There are millions of websites out there and we obviously can’t sort through them all ourselves. However, I think we often forget that they are businesses and exist to make money. Often the best way for them to make money is to provide the most valuable search tools but that isn’t what is necessarily driving them.
So what’s the point of all this? Awareness. We should be aware that search engines are not as unbiased as we may think. We should be aware that just as in the physical world it’s all to easy for the big guys to overwhelm the little ones. And, just as in the physical world, this often hurts the consumers.
