Search engines are a vital part of the web browsing experience, but users are increasingly uncomfortable with the amount of personal data being used for results retention. Until recently, it seemed impossible for users to benefit from the search features enabled by their data without passing it on to a third party, but some believe that blockchain technology can help deliver the best of both worlds. We sat down with Kurt Nielsen, co-founder and president of Partisia Blockchain, to learn about the potential impact of blockchain on the search market, SEO, and the online advertising industry.
What aspects of the Partisia blockchain make it suitable for search engines?
Partisia Blockchain mainly solves privacy and interoperability. The collaboration with Better Internet Search will gradually explore different ways to personalize the search without compromising privacy. Through the use of public and private smart contracts, Partisia Blockchain provides the infrastructure for privacy-preserving digital agents that automatically put user data into play on demand without exposing the data itself. For example, a search engine can be directed to classify search results according to a user's private preferences without the user sharing those preferences.
What advantages does a search engine based on Partisia offer, in addition to confidentiality?
Partisia Blockchain makes it possible to extract users' private data without sharing this confidential information with anyone. It has the potential to reverse the power structure in the internet economy! The business model behind Better Internet Search allows users to benefit from this controlled use of private information.
In terms of confidentiality, what advantages does Partisia offer over other methodologies that improve confidentiality?
Partisia Blockchain in particular exploits so-called unconscious computing and multi-party secure computing (MPC). This state-of-the-art technology allows a distributed set of computers to calculate directly on encrypted data without knowing anything about the data involved in the calculations, allowing unconscious calculation. The data is then protected in all its possible states: at rest, in transit and in use. Traditional security measures do not allow this somewhat contradictory property; that a user can control their own data even if it is used by a third-party service. This revolutionary integration solves one of the most pressing problems facing people today: privacy.
What is the special feature of Partisia's collaboration with Better Internet Search?
We take advantage of advanced cryptography to eliminate the basic trade-off between privacy and personalization. As far as we know, no alternative project allows the use of private data to provide the same user-friendly experience as traditional services without sharing data. This is one of the many ways our platform is unique. The alternatives to the current market for online advertising, based on monitoring and recording user data without involving the user, are to offer services that limit monitoring. While positive, this hampers the revenue stream that funds many services and reduces the ability to customize those services. Making the user a direct partner with a fair share of revenue in the data economy is part of the solution. What we do offer, however, is a platform that removes that trade-off by compensating users for using their data, not sharing it.
Can you give us an idea of the kind of computational overhead associated with using Partisia?
Using MPC often involves significant computational overhead compared to plaintext computation. Partisia is a pioneer in this field, as we made the first commercial use of MPC in 2008 and since then computing has become a million times faster. However, computing overhead remains a significant challenge and the way MPC and similar technologies are used must take this into account. With Better Internet Search, we are working together to develop an alternative that is confidential and completely ad-free. Instead of using valuable processing power and bandwidth to serve ads to users, this new alternative search engine leverages advanced algorithms to prioritize search results that search engines are actually looking for. This offsets the computational overhead by prioritizing processing power to run these algorithms.
Can Partisia also be used with other search engines, like Google or Bing, to make them more privacy-friendly?
We would be delighted to welcome these companies to join us and many others in making user privacy a priority. It's very comforting to see viable alternatives like Better Internet Search emerge, which focuses on building user-centric models rather than purely profit-making ones. Putting the customer at the forefront of any project will reap positive long-term results, and I strongly believe that we will see more and more dominant market players adopt this technology as the user privacy debate grows louder.
How will blockchain technology affect search marketing and SEO?
Adding privacy to the blockchain will have a profound impact on the advertising market. This technology will provide small advertisers with significant power, while giving end users full sovereignty over their data and identities. Marketers or advertisers can use the high-value data they have access to, while data owners can rest assured that their privacy is guaranteed. Today, the data marketplace does not allow the user to benefit financially, even though the owners of their data enjoy the benefits derived from the end-user data. We look forward to working with Better Internet Search to develop this alternative to the conventional business model, democratizing data for the first time.