Quote:
Originally posted by Kurant
If you open a restaruant, and ten others open across the street from you. If your food sucks, you go out of business. Why should consumers be forced to eat sub-par food, or use sub-par search engines?
|
The problem is not the diversity of the offerings (I agree, there are plenty of search engines), it's just that many people seem to rely on Google.
If a restaurant serves you bad food, you go look for an alternative. If Google returns only half the resources that it could return to your query, how would you know?
If you searched for 'animated movie', and Google decided to like the Disney corporation, then it could return Disney (and relating pages) as the first links to any such query. And move Pixar, Dreamworks and the like to say the tenth page.
Joe, the average user, would not know, would not care and therefore be 'led' to Disney, severely affecting the economic situation of the affected companies.
** Note, I am exagerating here, and I'd hate to see regulation. But I'm all for competition that Joe can see.
Most people know only google, and like Altavista at their time, Google can abuse that. I just hope that Google keeps their QoS as they seem to be doing...
** Another note: I agree with
lordjeebus below...