Search (Non-)Neutrality and Impact on Innovation

International audienceThe search neutrality debate, as a parallel to the network neutrality debate, is raging worldwide, with search engines accused of biasing the ranking of their organic links to provide a competitive advantage to their own content. In a recent paper, we have designed a model and determined the optimal ranking policy for a search engine as a trade-off between short-term revenue (based on the potential immediate gain from high-ranked links) and long-term revenue (based on the satisfaction of users due to the relevance of the ranking). We here apply this model to investigate on an example whether non-neutrality impacts innovation. We illustrate that a revenue-oriented search engine may indeed deter innovation at the content level, hence the validity of the argument (without necessarily meaning that search engines should be regulated)