Forget EU’s Toothless Vote To ‘Break Up’ Google; Be Worried About Nonsensical ‘Unbiased Search’ Proposal by Mike Masnick.
Mike uncovers (in plain sight) the real danger of the recent EU proposal to “break up” Google.
Reading the legislation (which I neglected to do), Mike writes:
But within the proposal, a few lines down, there was something that might be even more concerning, and more ridiculous, even if it generated fewer (actually, almost no) headlines. And it’s that, beyond “breaking up” search engines, the resolution also included this bit of nonsense, saying that search engines need to be “unbiased”:
Stresses that, when operating search engines for users, the search process and results should be unbiased in order to keep internet searches non-discriminatory, to ensure more competition and choice for users and consumers and to maintain the diversity of sources of information; notes, therefore, that indexation, evaluation, presentation and ranking by search engines must be unbiased and transparent; calls on the Commission to prevent any abuse in the marketing of interlinked services by search engine operators;
But what does that even mean? Search is inherently biased. That’s the point of search. You want the best results for what you’re searching for, and the job of the search engine is to rank results by what it thinks is the best. An “unbiased” search engine isn’t a search engine at all. It just returns stuff randomly.
See Mike’s post for additional analysis of this particular mummers farce.
Another example why the Internet should be governed by a new structure, staffed by people with the technical knowledge to make sensible decisions. By “new structure” I mean one separate from and not subject to any existing government. Including the United States, where the head of the NSA thinks local water supplies are controlled over the Internet (FALSE).
I first saw this in a tweet by Joseph Esposito.