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 THE STAT 26Percentage of wireless customers who use their cell phones to take picturesMore Vitals
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JUNE 10, 2003
The Web, According to Google [Page 2 of 2] MISSING POLICIES. That's the shiny side of Google -- the friendly search engine that makes the world a smaller and better place. But as Google has moved toward holding a de facto monopoly on Web searches, critics have started to see another side -- one that worries them. Privacy advocates have begun to question what Google is doing with all the data it collects on the people who do the hundreds of millions of searches it processes. According to the Web site Google-Watch.org, a nonprofit group dedicated to informing the public about the search giant's inner workings, Google has no policies protecting the confidentiality of information it collects on its visitors via Web cookies. (Google execs declined to comment for this article.) Recently, Google Watch nominated Google for the 2003 Big Brother Award, a tongue-in-cheek honor it gives each year to presumed privacy offenders. What data Google collects and keeps are of more than academic interest to privacy advocates: In an October, 2001, analysis of the Patriot Act, respected cyber-liberties advocacy group the Electronic Frontier Foundation warned: The government may now spy on innocent Americans' Web surfing, including terms entered into search engines, by merely telling a judge anywhere in the U.S. that the spying could lead to information that's "relevant" to an ongoing criminal investigation." The biggest repository of such information would be Google. Even more disturbing to some Web-search observers are the contextual nuances that can influence Google's results. For example, type in the search term "Ruby Ridge" -- referring to a 1992 shootout in Idaho in which the FBI killed an alleged white supremacist -- and Google returns thousands of pages with tons of information. But hardly any of the links at the top of the list provide balanced information on the issue. Rather, most of the top results present extreme views of the incident. WHAT ABOUT BOOKS? Were Google less influential that probably wouldn't matter. But as Americans, especially young ones, come to regard the leading search site as the source of all human knowledge, the effect could become pernicious. "People perceive it as the one and only place they need to go for information," says James Rettig, head librarian of the University of Richmond's Boatwright Memorial Library, in Richmond, Va. "That's unfortunate, because people who use only search engines will miss things" -- such as books, which represent most of humankind's body of knowledge to date. Rettig notes that most of those don't show on Google and that many that do are buried in its rankings. What's more, he predicts, most books that have ever been published will never end up online. "There's going to be this vast retrospective body of information and knowledge that never becomes electronic," he says. "The costs of conversion are astronomical, especially compared with the potential payback." Call it the Google Gap -- the difference between the growing perception that the site is omniscient and the fact that it isn't. This can be particularly damaging for businesses that run afoul of the rules Google uses to ensure that sites don't manipulate its rankings. While Google's concern over cheaters is justified, too often its rules punish innocent sites, critics claim. "LIVID" WEBMASTERS. Witness the case of haute couture swimwear concern Graham Kandiah, whose site Google banished in May. John Hutzler, president of New York-based Now Interactive Services, which manages Graham Kandiah's online presence, believes Google shut the site out because of a Web-page popup that was used to launch a music player -- a popup that surfers would never see. But he doesn't know for certain because Google never answered the outfit's questions about what had happened. In the three days it took to diagnose the problem, Graham Kandiah says it lost 20% of its traffic -- which might have been avoided had Google simply sent it an automated e-mail explaining the reason for its action. Accounts of similar scuffles with other sites permeate Google discussion groups on the Web. Many Webmasters "are livid about what's happening," complains Hutzler. He ended up purchasing advertising keywords on Google to get Graham Kandiah back on the site. But even though he's paying, he still can't use popups in Graham Kandiah pages. Should Google further consolidate its control of the search world, argues Harvard's Zittrain, the Web could become the equivalent of a company town. That prospect prompts him to argue that "we need a concept of the public interest for the Internet that we haven't completely worked through yet. Somewhere between 'the market will magically take care of this' and 'let's regulate the heck out of it,' there has to be a solution." Zittrain isn't sure exactly what it would be. He suggests that Google may be amenable to suggestions, since it prides itself on listening to the faithful and making their wishes come true. If Google wants its image to remain untarnished, it may have no other choice.
 By Alex Salkever, Technology editor for BusinessWeek Online Get BusinessWeek directly on your desktop with our RSS feeds.  Add BusinessWeek news to your Web site with our headline feed. Click to buy an e-print or reprint of a BusinessWeek or BusinessWeek Online story or video. To subscribe online to BusinessWeek magazine, please click here. Learn more, go to the BusinessWeekOnline home page  | | |
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