The Internet – The Cyber Wild West?

The Internet is not quite the cyber wild west as is often proclaimed. Although much is made of the fact that it is hard to police, the development of robust Internet usage channels and moreover the monopolisation of these channels by major Internet entities means that a lot of control can indeed be effected upon what Internet users are disposed to consuming online.

Clear and obvious examples of such entities easily come to mind. For search engines there’s Google, for online videos there’s Youtube, for social networks there’s Facebook or MySpace, for breaking news there’s the Drudge Report etc etc…

Clearly search engines play an essentially fundamental role in what information Internet users go on to access. The monopoly that Google holds in the search engine market means that they, for the most part, control this access. So in theory, if Google don’t (for whatever reason) want your webpage to be accessible, they can dent your page’s accessibility by eliminating it from their search results.

In practice, Google stress that they are objective in their assessment and ranking of webpages, following an algorithm, which they have made public. However, there have been notable instances in the past where Google have ‘banned’ major websites from their search results for failing to comply with their terms of use.

Obviously, Google is a private entity, and so is free to dictate whatever compliance criteria it pleases, especially given no government legislation exists to regulate search engine practice. So even though they have, as it appears, been rigorous in maintain a high standard of objectivity in their assessment of websites, the continuation of such standards is something that conscientious Internet users have to take on trust, with little course of reaction available in the event of breach of these standards.