Re: Political economy of distributed search (was topical search...)

John D. Pritchard (jdp@cs.columbia.edu)
Fri, 03 May 1996 11:20:55 -0400


> Although that model may also work on the Web, I think there's a strong
> argument to suggest that it is evolving into a model in which the Web
> publisher brings together advertisers and customers; those who do so most
> efficiently will be the biggest winners.
>
> I changed the subject line to raise a question. Although I think it's
> self-evident that efficient distributed search is in the interest of
> Internet users, is it in the interest of the search service providers to
> enable it? Is "coopertition" in this arena (cooperating competitors)
> likely?

what i'm seeing is that while this model is coming, and who knows where it
will end up, commercial organizations with many varied relationships to
internet (for commerce or information or services...) still need to compete
to draw interest in their sites.

i think that yahoo, for example, represents a meta cooperative, both in the
model you frame and as an indicator of what kinds and forms of commercial
site "interest" or "locate" information the commercial sites have in
common. so there's opportunity for cooperation which is an indicator of
what is possible.

i guess the moral of the story is that nothing is predictable, so look at
the possibilities.

-john