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You are enormously helpful, Irene. Thank you.
It is as if in order to provide transparency, a necessary
condition for a reliable web service, the search systems
should adopt and publish a deontic modal logic model for their
filters, and a means via the web service to parameterize
the terms of that.
Again, not pounding on Google, but pointing out some
issues:
1. The simplicity of the interface makes the service
attractive. The tradeoff for simplicity is to provide
a complex filtering process that ensures as best as
possible that for ANY term or combination of terms
entered, the most important or likely URI is returned
at the top of a candidate list. Google is making an
educated guess and that works for this interface.
2. A web service does not need a human interface. It
may have different requirements which may include removing
the filters or guessing process or the ability to adjust
these. One may wish to include not just web pages, but
email and other sources. Given media convergence, this
becomes an ever tougher problem. Because humans do the
category work for sources such as ODP, one may wish to
include or exclude their work because such categorizations
are arguable.
3. Because a service might work differently, it may support
a subscribable process. This could include clients that
are value-adding by providing not the simplest interface,
but an adaptive interface. It is the difference between
a television with a channel knob, a volume knob and an
on/off button and a multisystem handheld control unit for
an entertainment system. Learning curve vs local control.
We really don't know how the market would react. The best
analogy I have is the emergence of cable television. Many
of the same claims were made. Yet, the market eventually
subscribed overwhelmingly given more freedom of choice, more
choices, and fewer filters on the content provided. The yang
of that yin is that now some want MORE filters on the content
but that is a cultural and temporal bias.
It is possible that a 'democratic or republican' system is
not wanted, but one in which local choice rules. For a web
service, then the notion of a modal logic for agents that
use the resources could be pertinent.
len
From: Irene Polikoff [mailto:Irene@topquadrant.com]
Phrase selling (or rather key words selling, also known as AddWords) has
no effect on page rank in the search results. It just determines which
adds get served for which types of searches.
People who place the add, select the search key words for which they
want to have their add displayed. Google has an interesting policy
regarding the adds - if not enough people click on an add, they will
stop serving it deciding that it is not relevant to the topics
associated with it.
Open Directory is used in Google Directory as explained at
http://www.google.com/dirhelp.html
"Important" vote basically mean that if you have a site about fly
fishing, a link from another fishing site counts a bit more than a link
from a site on XML.
Here is another interesting place to get some information on what Google
is up to http://google.blogspace.com/ including a link to Google Labs
http://labs.google.com/
Hope this helps,
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