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Comment by fastball | Hacker News Reader

So it would be ok with you if Google said "we exclude any search results we want, you can pay for Google premium to have uncensored results"?

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That would actually be okay for me. But it wouldn't be okay for google as it would directly affect their revenue model of using traffic analysis as a means to promote advertising. There's probably more money in it for them that way. But Google's right to make money doesn't trump all other rights.

Well said, making us pay them for the quality/uncensored search results basically destroys the main source of how they can create insights on data by letting people use their services for free. Google's search business is now a public utility but so far I do not see regulatory systems capable of regulating it without destroying it (catch 22 so far).

Why am I reading a lot of these argument like being a left or right debate.

I dont think Google is quite there yet to be regulated. You have alternative like bing, and you have Duck Duck Go, and the latter actually provide pretty decent results.

The discussion is more one of he principle of whether a dominant market leader is allowed to use its position of dominance in the market to influence that market or not. It’s hardly “left and right” to debate this as being right or wrong.

That is certainly true, but they were arguing whether it should be regulated. And regulation or not are always political.

Especially for the businesses doing the lobbying not to be regulated.

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