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Comment by mustyoshi | Hacker News Reader

Why should the public be given access to that information? Google should be under no obligation to provide any of that unless we "nationalize" the idea of search engines and declare them a human right. Until then, it's a voluntary service to be consumed.

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Governments would be absolutely salivating at the prospect of such simple censorship if they owned the search engines. And be under no illusion that all without exception would abuse that power in some way or another.

All limited-liability companies are government-supported entities and it's perfectly fair to impose corresponding social responsibilities on them. In this case Google is in a monopoly position which means they have a stronger responsibility to not only be fair but be seen to be fair.

Of course google isn't under such a legal obligation. But then they should be explicit: "We are ranking results on our own quality metric which we won't disclose, you'll just have to like them", and let the market react. This position can then be taught in schools to kids, and used whenever google search results are being evaluated by the public. Right now google brands its search results as being driven by the public.

It's like when people say google (or fb, etc) has no [first amendment] obligation to allow freedom of speech. Fine, but then don't constantly describe yourself of defenders of free speech, say from the outset you will police speech as you see fit, drop the pretense that your policing is somehow objective, and let the market digest that.

> Right now google brands its search results as being driven by the public.

Where does it do that? Google search results being an opaque algorithm is not a big secret, given how Google clearly refuses to talk about details every time this comes up.

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