Special Topics in Information Science - The Search Engine Society: Search engines have become the center of gravity of our contemporary information society, providing a powerful interface for accessing the vast amount of information available on the World Wide Web and beyond. The audacious mission of Google, for example, is “to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.” Attaining such a goal necessarily results in significant changes to the ways in which information is created, stored, retrieved, and used. This course will critically examine the nature of search engines and their role in our information society, and reveal the unique challenges they bring to bear on information institutions, information policy, and information ethics.
Tag: Search Engines
Microsoft to Delete IP Addresses From Bing Search Logs after 6 months
Microsoft has fired a new salvo into the search privacy wars, announcing it will delete IP addresses from the Bing search engine logs after 6 months. Microsoft has decided to take the lead in search privacy and agree to the European Union’s demand that data retention be cut to six months. Previously, Microsoft de-identified its search logs immediately, but didn’t purge the IP address until 18 months. Now, de-identification still takes place immediately, and the IP addresses are completely removed in 6 months.
Society of the Query conference: Stop Searching, Start Questioning!
Speaking of conferences in November that I am unable to attend, Geert Lovink and Shirley Niemans at the Institute of Network Cultures have organized the Society of the Query conference, November 13-14 in Amsterdam. With the tagline "Stop Searching, Start…
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Comparing Search Data Retention Policies of Major Search Engines
Well, according to Microsoft. As part of the on-going battle among major search engines related to search data retention policies, Microsoft has published this chart attempting to summarize and compare the state of anonymization in the search industry (click to…
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Catching Up – Link Dump
I’ve been ridiculously busy lately, and need to quickly catch up on some recent items of note: Scientific American has a nice special issue dedicated to "the future of privacy." Nothing new here for most privacy scholars, but it is…
New “Cuil” Search Engines Decides User Logs Aren’t Necessary
Some former Googlers have launched a rival search engine named for the Gaelic word for knolwedge, Cuil. Cuil (pronounced like "cool"), which claims to have an index three times the size as Google and ten times as Microsoft, aims to…
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Comparing Search Engine Privacy Policy Visibility
Prompted by Google's resistance to cluttering its homepage with a link to its privacy policy, I decided to take a quick tour of the major search engines to compare the relative visibility of their privacy policies. AOL, Microsoft, and Yahoo!…
Article 29 Working Party: Opinion on Data Protection Issues Related to Search Engines
The European Commission's Article 29 Data Protection Working Party has released their long-awaited "Opinion on Data Protection Issues Related to Search Engines" (PDF), something I've debated here. At first glance, it seems we're in agreement that the Data Protection Directive…
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Web Search: Multidisciplinary Perspectives
I'm pleased to announce that Web Search: Multidisciplinary Perspectives has, after 2 years in the making, been published in the Information Science and Knowledge Management series by Springer. Co-edited with Amanda Spink, Web Search is a collection of chapters approaching…
Audiovisual Search: Regulatory Challenges for Audiovisual Abundance
Last fall I had the pleasure of participating in a “Forum on Quaero: A public think tank on the politics of the search engine” hosted by the Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht, Netherlands. My talk at that event outlined…
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