Legal Research

I’m Just the Messenger. Please Don’t Shoot Me.

I’m about halfway through Bill Tancer’s new book, Click: What Millions of People Are Doing Online and Why it Matters.  It is fascinating.  Tancer is general manager of global research for Hitwise, a firm that analyzes 10 million Internet users in the U.S.  He gets to sift through search data to spot emerging trends, counterintuitive data points, and all manner of cool things.  He’s basically mining what John Battelle calls the Database of Intentions:

“If you spend enough time considering all the different elements of our Internet use, you begin to compile an ever clearer picture of who we are and what exactly is on our minds.”

In politics, what seems to be on our minds is abortion:

“… over the last several years, the number one political search terms has been ‘abortion’, followed by ‘death penalty’ in a distant second and, for the month of January 2008, ‘national debt,’ which is a newcomer to the issue list, most likely due to fear of a looming recession.”

Which leads me to the following story in the NY Times today.  Google is now allowing religious groups to buy ads on abortion-related terms.  It took a lawsuit by the UK group The Christian Institute to force the change.

Ten years ago — heck, five years ago, even — the battleground for abortion would have played out on TV and the radio.  And it still does, to an extent.  But now Google has become the moderator of the discussion.  They’ve obviously carefully crafted their AdWords Content Policy.  It makes sense that they prohibit ads for steroids and weapons.  But I suspect that the anti-violence section of their policy — “Advertisements and associated websites may not promote violence or advocate against a protected group” — will continue to be shaped by legal action.

I hope to post a full review of Click in the near future.

Full post as published by Jenkins Webblits on September 22, 2008 (boomark / email).