Commercial Dominance of the Web
We believe that folks/organizations that work hard should see a good return (monetarily) on their labor. We are not opposed to commercial endeavors per se unless they significantly and detrimentally effect the public good.
We believe that the commercialization of the web has been taken to such extent that it is having a significant and detrimental effect upon humanity. Further, we see this as being something which is reinforced (unintentionally) by major existing search engines in two forms:
The organization with the most money can dominate the search results of several of the largest search engines. Beyond this, organizations with significant financial resources can bury the alternative perspectives on a topic by buying up available ad inventory.
There is currently a wide ranging discussion on whether search engine results should have ads on them at all.
While we are not (philosophically) opposed to ads on search result pages we believe we can monetize search through other, less controversial means.
Our greater concern with commercialization of the web is with "organic search results." Sites do not often rank highly for competitive terms on accident. It is usually the result of significant financial expenditure upon SEO/SEM. The results are not truly organic, they are paid through another means.
Sure, search engines change their algorithms frequently to help diminish the worst offenders' ability to game search results BUT the algorithm changes have had temporary/incomplete results and generally don't cause difficulty for less egregious offenders who may still be utilizing significant financial resources to dominate search results.
We are not opposed to SEO or SEM. We are concerned about implementing processes that ensure the BEST content is shown first, not just the content that has been most optimized.
