I am just wondering; would it be illegal if Google provided biased search results?
Let me give you an example.
Some of the top people at Google would like the democrats to win the presidential election in the United States. To help the democrats, they offer some undercover marketing. Every time someone used Google to search for republican or something related to the party, they would get negative information regarding the republicans. And every time someone searched for democrats or something related to the party, they would get very positive information.
Do you get the picture?
Who controls Google?
Can Google have any impact regarding the presidential election, even if they tried? And what if they did try, would anybody suspect it, or would they get caught?
Well, even if they wanted, I guess it would be kind of hard for them to do anyway. They got more than ten thousand employees around the world. A few people could probably not stage something like that. But sometimes you might stop and think, do you remember the google miserable failure search?
And there have been several so called Political Google bombs, but what if they were not bombs, but directed from Google headquarters? This is not a conspiracy theory, I am just asking, what if?
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June 11, 2008 at 10:13 pm
Try ziipa.com
March 12, 2011 at 6:09 pm
You know what’s funny? When I clicked on this google search result, my computer went into instant alert–”Your computer is being infected — ALERT, ALERT!!!” I closed the window, copied the http address to Yahoo and what’dya know… the above post came up with no scary alerts. I find that rather interesting, don’t you?
As to Google’s influence on their news feed–totally think there’s some messing around. Yesterday the first thing to pop up in their news about the potential nuclear disaster in Japan wasn’t anything about the disaster itself, rather stories about the nuclear industry being hurt by bad PR.
March 12, 2011 at 6:29 pm
Oh, I didn’t know about this. What kind of browser are you using?
I should look into this, because most of my visitors comes via Google
Thanks a lot for your comment.
June 10, 2011 at 3:12 am
It is rumoured that Google prevented access to a press release concerning the Willy the Wizard case against J.K.Rowling by bowing to pressure from her notorious lawyers Schillings. The press release appeared in hundreds of papers and articles around the world but a search on the keywords “Rowling-Adrian Jacobs” was quickly rendered defunct and now shows nothing. If Google can be arm-wrestled into submission to do such a thing then freedom of speech is at the mercy of power elites. An intolerable state of affairs when
Google itself pulled out of China on the basis of encroachment by the
Chinese government. The press release which I have read is completely factual and non-defamatory raising the question of whether said power elites can be exclusively privileged by Google to dumb down what is essentially one of the biggest cases of its kind in modern history. Surely Google’s first duty is to mankind in general, the freedom of information act, and our democratic rights … or since when did we all cease to be equal under the law?
June 10, 2011 at 6:37 am
Hey Tod,
This is very interesting. I haven’t heard anything about this before.
I use Google all the time, and to me, it’s by far the best search engine, but they have become very powerful. And it’s an interesting question, because it’s a private company.
Thanks again for your brilliant comment.
Jens
June 17, 2011 at 2:03 am
Thanks Jens,
Never forget: “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely” and what power is more absolute in the world of information than Google at present? And how many power mongers do you suppose are climbing over each other to get their hands on a piece of it? Schillings job is to suppress any information true or false about their clients from reaching the public. They do this by legal threat and have jumped all over Google and Twitter and are even trying to get the law changed in their favour in order to control your fundamental human right… freedom of expression upon which democracy as we know it is actually based. Crazy or what? But we are back again to “power” and “corruption”, are we not?
June 19, 2011 at 12:00 am
Power corrupts, that’s true. I have a masters degree in political science, and I’ve read a lot about power and what it does to people, and I remember your quote (from Lord Acton). It’s a brilliant quote, and we see it over and over again what power does to people.
Google represents one of the most powerful companies when it comes to controlling information (along with Facebook and a few others), so it’s very interesting to look a little closer when it comes to how they are using this power. Most people never question Google, they just rely on them to deliver the “right” results.
Thanks again for the brilliant comment Tod.
Jens
September 24, 2011 at 3:38 am
Sorry to go ever so slightly off topic but in reference to a comment above about JK R and Willy The Wizard
How about this one then
In the UK we had a series of films called “The Carry On” Films
Carry on Doctor
Carry on up the Khyber
Carry on Cleo
Carry on Regardless
etc
etc
Well in Carry on Camping there is a female character named “Harriet Potter”
hmm Harriet Potter
I wonder if Nicholas Flamel knows about this (which book was he from again?)
Interesting thoughts though but Google already control search results even with simple thing like spell prompts and instant search working together search results are very controlled as any slang or made up words of any similarity to a set standard will always be covered by a page with supposed correct results with supposed correct spelling.
Though not a political thing it would not take a rocket scientist to work out just how to manipulate such search results.
Throw into the mix Google+ and being logged in to your own Google account when searching deliver the most bizarre results that bear little resemblance to real search results so this is yet another area with room to work out how to manipulate things and not by Google as anyone with the desire and drive to do so could fathom methods to achieve that very manipulation
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