Software Voices

UPDATED 02-19-2006 I incorrectly stated that Google was no longer showing Epinions reviews for newer music. My recent searches say I was either mistaken before, or Google changed its policy again.

Eric Hammond pointed out Google Music Search to me a few days ago. I eagerly tried it out and was thunderstruck -- Google stepped over a line I thought they would never cross. As I looked up bands, I found most of the reviews were from Epinions and were offered alongside comparison shopping. Which; of course, is Epinions' business model. One of the bands I looked up had 7 pages of reviews on Google Music Search, all provided by Epinions.

At this point, the alert reader will notice that I said "had." More on that in a minute.

First, why is this an ethical issue? Search results are search results, right? In my opinion, there is a big difference between searching and aggregating. By aggregating Epinions' reviews and ratings, Google was trying to replace Epinion as a destination for this type of information. This undercuts Epinions business model by destroying the community and makes it less likely that this type of information will be created in the future. Had this continued, this would have left Epinions in the position of having to choose between giving up all traffic from Google (by excluding them in robots.txt) or providing them content for free to compete with them. Truly a Hobson's Choice for an Internet company.

Based on the searches I did today as I was starting to write this blog entry, I have to say that it appears that Google has modified Google Music Search to be much more reasonable. While the Pixies search above shows Epinions reviews, all of the reviews are years old. Searches on more recent albums (like anything by Norah Jones) shows a large number of reviews on Epinions, none of which show up on Google Music Search. This seems to me to be a great compromise: it preserves Epinions incentive to grow its community while extending the life of the content created there (by exposing it to more people after it ceases to be a draw at Epinions). Bravo Google.The reviews are back for new music. Google is taking a particularly interesting approach with the reviews from the BBC web site. More on that in a future blog post.

I should emphasize that this is all speculation based on a few searches several days apart -- there is a good chance that it is entirely off-base. That said, I think the ethical issue is real and will play itself out again and again as the importance of community continues to rise on the Internet. For more on this, see John Clippinger's and David Bollier's thoughts on the conflict between the "market" and the "commons."

For another example of this type of conflict, look to the job listings search market. Indeed is a search engine, and Oodle is an aggregator similar to Google Music Search (I think they might disagree with this label, to be fair). Craigslist, seeing this distinction, allows Indeed to crawl them but not Oodle. Indeed's model doesn't threaten Craiglist's community, where Oodle's does because Oodle is seeking to replace Craigslist as a destination. A quick glance at the homepage makes this clear. I offered my opinion on this on Oodle's blog.