Joris van Hoboken

Today, the Federal Trade Commission has closed the investigation of the proposed acquisition of DoubleCLick by Google, indeed a very nice Christmas gift to Google. Apart from that, and closely tied to it, the FTC comes with principles for self regulation of the market of online behavioral advertising, about which it held a two day town hall early November 2007. The principles are under consultation until February 22nd, 2008.

The FTC is not unanimous, but 4-1. Jones Harbour dissents, asserting that “at this time, without imposing any conditions on the merger, neither the competition nor the privacy interests of consumers will have been adequately addressed.”

Further on she argues for a broader scope of the analysis, including consumer protection, referring explicitly to the creation of one dominant database of intentions (quoting Batelle): “The transaction will combine not only the two firms’ products and services, but also their vast troves of data about consumer behavior on the Internet. Thus, the transaction reflects an interplay between traditional competition and consumer protection issues. The Commission is uniquely situated to evaluate the implications of this kind of data merger, from a competition as well as a consumer protection perspective. The Commission should maximize its opportunity to do so, especially where the merged firm will be capable of dominating the ‘Database of Intentions’.”

She concludes that the merger will have the potential to cerate efficiencies, but “has greater potential to harm competition, and it also threatens privacy.“

That’s Jones Harbour’s Christmas present to the search and advertisement giant.

It’s raining material on search and privacy. Here is a report of PEW, Digital Footprints with empirical data from the US. (via Concurring opinions)

Through Michael’s blog I just came across this post by Eszter Hargittai about the ‘knol’ plans of Google. I agree about the name not being the best choice, at least for the Netherlands. In Dutch knol means tuber, definitely not a very sexy word. In the province Zeeland where I grew up it also means the huge type of horse that was traditionally used to work in the fields.

Now the more important question. What will Google do with knol (and Wikipedia) in its search results? For sure it will be normally be added to the results. It could either be as a special link, or in the results. If it is placed between the organic results it has to compete with Wikipedia results, which usually rank very high in Google. If knol is placed separately, it can be highlighted. This would be a more obvious departure from ‘fair’ ranking and search neutrality. It is hard to imagine a third way, which would respect this criterion. A Wikipedia competitor is mostly welcome however, so if they find a way to add knol and not push away valuable results, thus increasing diversity it is not a step backwards.

I expect Google will do anything to minimalize the visibility of its editorial control in this matter. It might be able to leverage the control it gives to users to optiomize results; control that in the case of knol can ultimately be used to receive and increase revenue.