The Issue Of Trust With Search Engines And The World Wide Web

Ten years ago, trust is a word that you won’t often hear mentioned when talking about the Internet. But as people’s lives became more intertwined with computers and as computers continued to push towards a networked model, trust becomes more and more of an issue.

How did the issue of trust become such big thing to the Internet community? The answer probably lies in the story of one of the biggest Internet success story so far – the story of Google, and how it revolutionized search.

Although Google did not invent the search engine, it was the first technology company that successfully created a search engine that gave search results of exceptional quality and relevance. Because of this, users started to become more dependent to the Google search engine in finding information on the Internet. Google became our first destination in our quest for the answers to most of our day to day quest for information. Suddenly we find ourselves searching Google or other search engines for our most personal issues. Questions that normally we’re to shy to ask our friends about got their answers from the search engines. As the keywords and phrases that we enter on search engines piles up on their databases, they become more and more of a tell tale of certain aspects of our lives. There would have been no issue if our search queries vanished as quickly as we have asked them, but unfortunately this is not the case. Search engines keep a record of what we search on their search boxes.

The concept of personalization is one of the next big frontiers in the story of search, primarily because this is the one thing that might provide the most significant step towards quest for the perfect search engine – one that gives us exactly what the users are looking for. Search personalization will be the reason why a soccer player will find soccer-related results when he searches for “football” on a search engine while an American football player will find his own set of search results when does the same search. The search results that we will see will be different from what others see because we have differing domains of interest. But first, in order for search personalization to happen, the search engines must keep a profile of all our previous queries for analysis. This is where the problem starts, and it was brought more into the prying eyes of the public when the US Federal Government asked for these search records from the major search engines. Three of the major search engines, Yahoo, MSN and AOL followed the request without questions, but Google questioned the subpoena and legally battled against giving the requested data. Google knew that it had to protect these search records if it wanted protect the company’s credibility and to keep its user’s trust. Although the information that was being asked by the Government did not contain details that will personally identify individuals, the move nevertheless made the public more aware of the possible dangers of other people accessing a record of their search queries. In the end Google won and was only required to submit a portion of the original data requested, but the fact remained that the actions of the other three search engines is something that customers should be wary of, whether the data contained personally-identifiable information or not. It was more of an issue of the said search engine companies easily caving in to pressure of the government to give such kind of data.

Because of this and the growing concerns about privacy and trust with search engines a survey was done among 800 American Internet users. The survey revealed that most users were unhappy about search engine companies keeping records of their search queries. The majority were also opposed to the idea of the government monitoring user’s search engine queries. Not that people only cared now, it’s just that many didn’t realize the possible implications and dangers of the fact that their search queries were being monitored and kept by the search engine companies.

The scenario of the personalized search fully maximized is not too far off. If this is the future of search, then search engines must gain the trust of its users. The user’s fear of saved search queries is not so much about the idea that the search engines are saving it as it is about the dangers of the possibility that these information might get to the wrong hands.

The issue of trust and privacy goes well beyond search though. There is this trend in the computer industry where the software applications that we use are becoming web services rather than stand alone desktop applications. Although this offers the benefit of being able to work virtually anywhere (where there is Internet connection), this also has the serious implication that the user’s data will be stored on the Internet rather than on their hard drives. This has already happened widely in email, where web-based implementations are becoming more and more popular. With the advent of next-generation web applications fueled by new technologies and ideas, the concept of the web computer is slowly being realized. Privacy and trust will become more important in the future because then, user profiles will not be the only things that will be entrusted to the Internet companies -- users’ documents and files must also be kept safe and secure.

The issue and problems of trust with Internet search engine and the World Wide Web in general is not about to go away. As the Internet industry pushes on to new era of personalization and web applications, the issue of trust will become more relevant. As the industry leader, Google is showing a good effort in building company trust in the minds of the users. Search engine companies and web applications providers must continue to strive to make their systems more secure and robust, and their policies stronger against sharing of sensitive data. Only when users begin to trust these companies will the idea of a web-based operating system be fully realized.