I’ve recently been thinking that one perspective on this issue is the idea of resisting vertical integration (e.g., business models that allow a company to “leverage synergies” by gaining control over some of the following:

1) consumer electronics

2) content

3) internet access (via broadband, telecom, satellite)

4) intermediary services (such as search engines)

I generally don’t like the idea of one company using dominance in 1, 3 or 4 to commodify salience in 2. On the other hand, if I knew that such a company used the revenues it generated to cross-subsidize access for those currently underserved, I wouldn’t be so worried. That’s one reason I’m reconciled to the commodification of salience via Google adwords–they use their profits to perform a number of valuable public services, like digitizing the world’s books.

In any case, I just hope all sides can agree on the idea of transparency–any decision to highlight/hide content, or speed/slow it, should be public. This article pushes in that direction:

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=957373

and also provides a good historical perspective on the debate.