Google IS Evil–UPDATED

December 14, 2008 / 1:06 pm • By Dr. Melissa Clouthier

My Tweet bud Lagomorph, pointed me to this UK Register article about Google:

Google this week admitted that its staff will pick and choose what appears in its search results. It’s a historic statement – and nobody has yet grasped its significance.

Not so very long ago, Google disclaimed responsibility for its search results by explaining that these were chosen by a computer algorithm. The disclaimer lives on at Google News, where we are assured that:

The selection and placement of stories on this page were determined automatically by a computer program.

A few years ago, Google’s apparently unimpeachable objectivity got some people very excited, and technology utopians began to herald Google as the conduit for a new form of democracy. Google was only too pleased to encourage this view. It explained that its algorithm “relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value. “

Turns out that humans at Google choose what makes Google News. I wondered how hair-brained Huffington Post articles got headlined as actual news. Now we know. Evidently, this isn’t new news. I can’t say that I’m surprised, but I am alarmed.

As more and more people find their news via the web, it is disturbing that it’s not some impartial robot program deciding what’s news, but that it’s a few Dan Rathers sitting in a room deciding what you should know and not know. How is that different than the old media? How is it democratic? Answer: It’s not.

Google is evil. Beware the keepers of the information. They tend to morph into the deciders of what information you should know.

UPDATED:

The Gadfly has more on Evil Google.

Posted in Nerd Stuff • Political Animals • Show Me The Money
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  • http://harangue.org Jazzosopher

    Very troublesome when formerly trusted webtools become a tainted part of the body politic. . .

    I blogged some about it here earlier this month:
    http://www.harangue.org/2008/12/google-censorship.html

  • THE TRUTH

    I HAVE BEEN SAYING THIS FOR THE LAST TWO YEARS !!!

    CENSORSHIP IS THE FIRST STEP THE LIBERAL MEDIA WILL USE TO DESTROY OUR FREEDOMS !!!

    WHAT CAN WE DO ??? PLEASE RESPOND !!!

  • http://americanpowerblog.blogspot.com/ Americaneocon

    That would be “hare-brained,” and quick, make the change before you’re Googled!

  • Trish

    Google tracks you, and censors their responses.
    Why you’d want to use it I can’t imagine.

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  • Matt K.

    Is google doing something that no one else is?

  • J David

    Google is actively bidding to carry EVERYONE’S medical records, all of them. They will will eventually do so. Those kidding themselves that they still live in a “free country” are shortly to be sharply disabused of that notion. Google is just being “in your face” about who they are so we will all “get used to it”, before the next “New World Order” step takes place.

  • Karthik Balasubramanian

    Ha Ha.. this is the funniest post I ve seen. Google uses the page rank algorithm – this program crawls the net and ranks sites/pages according to a variety of characteristics and displays the results accordingly.

    But, there are websites that understand the Page-Rank algorithm and use intelligent technology to be ranked higher by google. This just requires intelligent content organization in the web page. It would be a chore/impossible task to screen all incoming searches at google. This website can be converted to show up on more searches and ranked higher too if u can take the time to do it.

    This is so funny, it made my day.. :) U actually called it evil.. ha ha ha…

  • WayneB

    John Hawkins (I think it was) has posted in the past that his site, among others, has been blocked from being included in Google News results. This is one type of example of this kind of editing, and the basis of their blocking seems to have no rhyme or reason, from what I have heard.

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  • http://www.nickschweitzer.net Nick

    I’ve heard both sides of this. It should be noted that the Register is about the worst technical reporting publication in existance, so I take anything out of there with an immediate grain of salt. Secondly, you’ll notice that they don’t link to anything on an official Google website (or anywhere else), while claiming that what their source was saying was official. If it’s official, Google always puts it in the cloud. That also makes it suspect.

    So while at the end of the day, this could actually be happening (as people will always suspect), it’s not official public Google policy as the Register article makes it sound like

  • J David

    One must expect that among the audience here there will be some Google stockholders…