North American Network Operators Group
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Re: Reality Check

  • From: Shawn McMahon
  • Date: Fri Mar 16 00:07:26 2001 
On Thu, Mar 15, 2001 at 03:07:30PM -0800, Scott Francis wrote:
> 
> The same way people have learned to make sure that a search for "Anna
> Kournikova" (for instance) returns, say, 200 records that are sites/pages
> that have nothing whatever to do with Anna Kournikova, and a whole LOT to do
> with bringing in cash to the sites in question.

This is self-defeating in the end; if your search site doesn't work, people
will stop using it.

If they stop using it, the advertising dollars will stop rolling in.

Thus, it's in the best interest of the owner of the search site to fix
the problem.  Hence why people are flocking to the latest best technology
they can find, such as Google.

> If there is money to be made (which there is), people will ALWAYS find a way to
> exploit inconsistencies in the system, unless it is NOT ALLOWED. See my reply

Understand that anytime you choose to have the law prohibit something, you
are eliminating choice at the point of a gun.

You are telling people that if they choose to believe differently from
you, you are willing to set into motion a chain of events that can only
end in one of two ways: either they eventually give in at some point in
the process, or they get shot.

This is worth it if you're talking about prohibiting behavior that hurts
people, but is it really worth it for disagreeing with you about business
models?

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