Fergus Cassidy

Caching in

ACCORDING to the Sunday Tribune's own polls last week, it's clear that what passes for politics in Ireland is bereft of the machinations that can sometimes give politics excitement or intrigue.

But, and it may appear strange to some, the same can't be said for the internet. The net is riddled with politics. A lot of it never reaches the inside of a computer monitor but it's there nonetheless. Once you get human beings bumping up against one another, you get politics and online politics has some similarities to the tick and mortar ones.

The internet does have some very fundamental and unique politics though. What gives it that uniqueness is its global nature.

Everyone who is on the internet has, more or less, a right to be there. Each person doesn't need anyone's permission to access and communicate. When something is seen as threatening or diluting that right in some way, people can speak up and do something about it.

At the core of internet politics is the unwritten first commandment: 'thou shalt not damage the network'. On whatever issue, that mantra is never far from the centre of net politics. And so it was last week, when two issues revealed the interesting innards of online politics.

Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the web, is a quiet and bashful man who always seems utterly confident that he chose correctly in the biggest decision of his life. If he had gone the other way, he would now be one of the world's richest men. He doesn't often do it so publicly, but last week Berners-Lee went on the offensive.

As at result of a recent patent ruling in the US courts, Microsoft was deemed to be in breach of the law by using another companies patented technology without permission. Eolas Technologies was previousy granted a patent for its method of extending a browsers capabilities with plug-ins etc. The courts ordered Microsoft to pay over $520m in compensation. Microsoft said it would not use the patented technology and would instead make changes to its browser.

Berners-Lee and the World Wide Web Consortium he facilitates, claimed last week that it can prove that it came up with the disputed technology first. In an unprecedented step, Berners-Lee wrote to the US Under Secretary of State for Commerce, included copies of prior art and called on the patent office to invalidate the patent. [1]

Now Microsoft won't be losing much sleep over the amount of damages or changing the code in its browser. But for Berners-Lee the issue is very, very important and he's right. With Internet Explorer's near total dominance as a browser, changes to it could cause problems. Berners-Lee wants the patent re-examined "in order to prevent substantial economic and technical damage to the operation of World Wide Web".

It's remarkable that any prior art wasn't revealed during the Microsoft case, but that's probably a politics story for another day.

The other hot potato that surfaced last week was the hardening speculation that Google is going to be floated on the stock exchange in the US early next year.

The Financial Times put its weight behind the date, while Google stuck a 'search me' pose. Rumours abounded of secret meetings with investment managers and of the shares being sold online.

The figures being bandied about on the stock's worth are incredible. With figures of $15bn-$25bn being seriously suggested, this makes Google the star of the internet. In less than five years two Stanford University geeks have created a Rolls Royce search engine and one of the web's most visited sites.

Google gets 70m visitors a month and over 200m searches a day. At peak times each day Google deals with 2,000 searches per second. All this without any marketing or branding strategy worth talking about. Smiling from ear to ear, Google earlier this year collected a 'Brand of the Year' award, coming in head of Coca Cola and Starbucks.

What's fascinating about the possible flotation is the unusual nature of Google as a company. It's owned by the founders and other private shareholders and doesn't release financial statements. The company is in very good health, with estimated annual revenues of over $500m and yearly profits of $100m.

At the same time the company likes to proclaim what it calls truths: "democracy on the web works"; "you can be serious without a suit" and best of all "you can make money without being evil". [2]

Now that the market beckons there is growing concern that such an intrinsic tool as Google will answer to a different drum.

Google co-founder Sergey Brin said recently: "I think people tend to exaggerate Google's significance. Some say Google is God. Others say Google is Satan. But if they think Google is too powerful, remember that with search engines all it takes is a single click to go to another search engine. People come to Google because they choose to".

Whether Google can sit at the hearth of Wall Street without getting its non-suits burned remains to be seen.

Google's future doesn't depend on how much it raises in a flotation. That rests on the company following the same road map as Tim Berners-Lee. If Google respects how the web and internet works then it has a future.

If it fails to heed the first commandment, the greatest damage and injury will be to itself.

If it gets in trouble, there'll be no search party.

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Links

[1] Statement released by the World Wide Web consortium, calling for the '906 patent to be invalidated.

[2] 'Ten things Google has found to be true'