Disinformation superhighway

If you travel on trains a fair amount, then you may well have noticed some smart black, white and red ads for www.information-revolution.org, asking us all some interesting questions about whether we should trust our information sources. Very good questions to ask, we think you'll agree.

The site looks very slick, with nice, homely touches like scanned bits
of paper with writing and doodles on them. The argument as presented is a bit vague and wishy-washy in comparison with the effort that's obviously been put into presenting the site. We and others (thanks, Alex) were a little, well, suspicious.

We can't agree more with what appears to be the main tenet of the site - that relying on one source of information is not a healthy thing. Bless 'em, those shy and retiring types behind the site are rather reluctant to name the search engine they appear to be having a pop at.

A quick whois.net search brings up the name of the domain registrant as Profero Ltd, a marketing and search engine optimisation (SEO) company, whose clients include Yahoo! and Ask.com. Both of these firms offer search engines that are quite distant rivals Google. Profero is based in trendy Camden, just off Pratt Street. We tried calling them this morning, but they've not got back yet.

Of course, there is choice on the internet when it comes to search, and Yahoo (with 23.8 per cent of the search engine market according to Nielsen/Netratings and Search Engine Watch) and Ask (2.6 per cent) are also valid choices. It's just that Google (49.2 per cent) is awfully good at finding out what people are searching for. Which all goes to show that we should all, indeed, ask serious questions about who is managing the information placed in front of us.