Frank Pasquale wrote the other day at madisonian.net about the Jekyll and Hyde aspect of search engines as gatekeepers. When a single search engine dominates a landscape, as Google does in the U.S. and Baidu does in China, a drop in page rank, a removal from search results, or a warning about malware or other undesirable content can drop a site’s traffic precipitously. In the case of a business or advertising-supported site, this could be the death knell for a site.
As Pasquale points out, this can be a social good or a social bad, depending on the circumstances. He cites allegations of Baidu quietly dropping sites from search results if the site owners aren’t willing to pay for sponsored links. When a search engine’s uses arbitrary, opaque criteria for deciding when to delist a site, or if delisting is done for financial gain rather than to benefit the searcher, the public loses.
In contrast, the public gains when this gatekeeper role is applied transparently, fairly, and in defense of the user. Pasquale cites Baidu’s decision to stop accepting sponsored links from "unlicensed health-care companies," and also references StopBadware (and, by extension, our relationship with Google, the actual gatekeeper). He points out that these are areas in which government and other mechanisms have failed to address social problems, and so search engines are stepping in to fill the void.
I’ve previously written about the need for businesses to behave transparently and responsibly in their roles as gatekeepers. I’ll go a step farther, though, and say that third party organizations like StopBadware are an important piece of the puzzle. With different motivations and different indicators of success than for-profit companies, these organizations can ensure that the companies are living up to their responsibilities and truly protecting the public.
