An interesting question arose in one classmate’s post this week. What is the Internet’s intended purpose? This question was posed in correlation with the topic of ethics in search engine advertising through paid placement and inclusion. I found this interesting because who is to say what a search engine can and can’t be used for. With new media changing everyday, it is hard to say what should and shouldn’t be. But the Internet is a place for everybody. And as my classmate stated so eloquently, anyone can alter the Internet’s content. With that being said, it seems that there can be no definite definition as to what a search engine is and what its ultimate mission should be.
According to our readings and other content this week, search engines have been defined as a tool meant to return a list of informational links on topic. Wikopedia defines a search engine as “a tool designed to search for information on the World Wide Web. May consist of Web pages, images, information, and other types of files.” Wordnet.princeton.edu defines it as “a computer program that retrieves documents and files or data from a data base or from a computer network (especially from the internet).” Wictionary.ord say it is “an application that searches for, retrieves, data basesd on some criteria, especially one that searches the internet for documents.” Webopedia goes on to define it as “a program that searches documets for specified keywords and returns a list of the documents where the keywords were found.” What all of these “definitions” have in common is that they are defined as what they are perceived to be at the time of the definition. With the ability to ever-alter the Internet’s content, nothing is absolute. It is ever-changing and therefore cannot be defined eternally. With this said, it is not for any of us to say that a search engine is not a place for advertised information. This advertised information may actually be, and in most cases is, relevant to a search topic. If the Internet is a place for everybody, then that must include advertisers.
The question of whether it is ethical or not to advertise on search engines will not go away anytime soon. After doing some “Web searches” on the topic, it has become clear to me that advertisers do have a place on search sites and are an integral part of keeping search engines alive. As I have stressed before, I see no problem with these advertisements (paid placements and inclusion) as long as it is made readily known to those searching.
