The
commercialization of the Web.
Or, if you can't find it, it isn't
there...
Early on in my web use, about 1995, the search engines that existed provided a mostly mechanically compiled index of the Internet that they saw. By the time I posted my first web site http://www.geocities.com/tolstead/ in 1997, advertising was getting increasingly intrusive. Now, June 2004, advertising has become an “in your face” battle between ad blocking software, and the endless need of the advertising people to throw more and more advertising at you. Most search engines now assume that anyone wanting to get a site into their index is running a business.
The search engine portals have sold out completely to the advertising interests, to the point that most of the search engines want money up front and on a recurring basis to get your web site analyzed as to whether or not it is “worthy” of being in their listings. Or, you can simply pay a large sum, and have your site included in most search results, whether it is appropriate or not. This clearly amounts to economic censorship.
As Ken Erickson, a friend of mine once said “more stuff is found on the Internet by accident than as a result of searching.” Now, more than ever, this is true. So, what is the effect of the commercialization of the Internet? As in other areas of US public life, more and more it is only the wealthy that can engage in public discourse. Eventually, I believe that this will be the end of the republic as we know it.