Guest Opinion by Kip Hansen
The world’s most influential information-gateway — GOOGLE Search — has recently made the decision to abandon its long-standing primary corporate policies: 1) “Don’t Be Evil” and 2) Provide internet search results based upon neutral algorithms, not human judgment; unbiased and objective.
Some may object to the charge that they have abandoned their oft-repeated mantra “Don’t Be Evil” — but to be clear, this has always meant, as Eric Schmidt (Executive Director of Google at the time) stated in a Wired profile in 2003, “Evil,” he said, “is what Sergey says is evil” (referring to Sergey Brin, who co-founded Google together with Larry Page).
As for the second point,
“As Stanford’s Terry Winograd, Page and Brin’s former professor and a consultant on Gmail, explains to Ken Auletta, “The idea that somebody at Google could know better than the consumer what’s good for the consumer is not forbidden.” He describes his former students’ attitude as “a form of arrogance: ‘We know better.’” …..
“[Larry] Page and [Sergey] Brin designed Google to avoid human judgment in rating the relevance of web pages. Recounting Google’s original design, Steven Levy describes the founders’ opinion that “having a human being determine the ratings was out of the question,” not just because “it was inherently impractical,” but also because “humans were unreliable. Only algorithms — well drawn, efficiently executed, and based on sound data — could deliver unbiased results.”
— Alex White, in “Google.gov”
In Alex White’s long discussion of the links and affinity between the Obama administration and Google executives, he notes “The common theme [as expressed by Obama and Google execs] is that we [the general public] make wrong decisions not because the world is inherently complex but because most people are self-interested and dumb — except for the self-anointed enlighteners, that is.” Like Obama, Google has appointed itself to be The Great Enlightener.
In a conference at MIT earlier this year, Obama said that tech companies such as Google “are shaping our culture in powerful ways. And the most powerful way in which that culture is being shaped right now is the balkanization of our public conversation,” contributing to the nation’s fragmentation — “. . . essentially we now have entirely different realities that are being created, with not just different opinions but now different facts —different sources, different people who are considered authoritative. It’s — since we’re at M.I.T., to throw out a big word — it’s epistemological. It’s a baseline issue.”
Let’s dive into that statement just a bit to make a point. President Obama said “…different facts —different sources, different people who are considered authoritative.”. What he says here is correct — it is a matter of which facts, what sources and whose expert opinion. There is not only one fact or one set of facts about any complex topic affecting society today. [ I wrote about this in the essay What’s Wrong With Alternative Facts?] Obama acknowledges that Google (and other technology companies) “are shaping our culture in powerful ways….” contributing to “the balkanization of our public conversation” and the nation’s fragmentation. I will point out, needlessly, that is a bad thing.
Bal·kan·ize [ Balkanized, Balkanization ]
To divide (a region or body) into smaller mutually hostile states or groups.
What exactly has Google done?
Google has decided, under the false flag of fighting “fake news” to “think of itself as a genuine public good in a manner calling upon it to give users not only the results they want but the results that Google thinks they need, the results that informed consumers and democratic citizens ought to have”. “Google, that is, has long aspired not merely to provide people the information they ask for but to guide them toward informed choices about what information they’re seeking. Put more simply, Google aims to give people not just the information they do want but the information Google thinks they should want. As we will see, the potential political ramifications of this aspiration are broad and profound.” [quotes in paragraphs above from Google.gov.]
I would add, there are also profound social and scientific ramifications as well.
According to The Guardian, Ben Gomes, vice-president of engineering, Google Search, said in a blogpost in 2017: “We’ve adjusted our signals to help surface more authoritative pages and demote low-quality content … “
What they have done appears to be a public good. They’ve moved “authoritative sources” to the top search results. The question we need to ask is: “How does this play out in the Real World?” In the real world it means that the worldview, the political bias, the social preferences, the positions taken in various ideological and scientific controversies — as decided by top Google Executives — have been virtually hard-coded into Google’s search algorithms. No longer is Google returning “unbiased and objective results”. Google search returns now, at the top of search results, only what Google’s executives think you should be able to find, only what they want you to see, only what they think all “right-thinking” people (like themselves, of course) would want. Google has created a reality in which search results reflect, exactly, the opinions and views held by top Google executives on important societal issues. One side of each issue will dominate the first few pages of searches on these important issues.
Amanda Ripley of Solutions Journalism Network, recently wrote “Once we get drawn in (to a polarized issue), the conflict takes control. Complexity collapses, and the us-versus-them narrative sucks the oxygen from the room. Over time, people grow increasingly certain of the obvious rightness of their views and increasingly baffled by what seems like unreasonable, malicious, extreme or crazy beliefs and actions of others,” …. “The lesson for journalists (or anyone) working amidst intractable conflict: complicate the narrative. First, complexity leads to a fuller, more accurate story. Secondly, it boosts the odds that your work will matter — particularly if it is about a polarizing issue. When people encounter complexity, they become more curious and less closed off to new information. They listen, in other words.” Attempts to simplify complex issues by exposing the public to only one side of an issue leads to more, not less, conflict and Obama’s “balkanization of our public conversation”.
As far back as September last year, the New York Times was reporting on Google’s apparent tampering: “Accusations that Google has tampered with search results are not uncommon and date back to the earliest days of its search engine. But they are taking on new life amid concerns that technology behemoths are directly — or indirectly — censoring controversial subjects in their response to concerns over so-called fake news and the 2016 presidential election.”
How many issues?
We don’t know yet — but Climate Change results have been tampered with in a glaringly obvious manner — all web sites even slightly contrarian have been “de-ranked” and “demoted” apparently as “low-quality” (read instead — “containing Google-unacceptable points-of-view”) and are browser-pages down the list, if they appear at all.
Suspected tampering includes, but is not limited to,: Abortion, Gun Control, climate change/global warming, US Illegal immigration, Gender issues, feral cats (an tiny issue for which Google was dinged in the press), health and sugar…these were found with a very quick check. It will be a major undertaking requiring a massive Citizen Science project to determine just how many, and which, controversial topics have been tampered with, topics into which Google has injected their own executive’s human judgement on which ideas, which opinions and which facts should be considered authoritative and which should be actively suppressed by “de-ranking” and “demoting”. Once the extent of the damage is known, it will take a broad-based social movement to get Google to take its fingers off the scales and let the Internet decide for itself.
A recent New York Times article, titled “The Case Against Google”, quipped “Google has succeeded where Genghis Khan, communism and Esperanto all failed: It dominates the globe. Though estimates vary by region, the company now accounts for an estimated 87 percent of online searches worldwide. ….. …When does a mega-company’s behavior become so brazen that it violates the law?”
Just this week, actually. The New York Times carried the story “E.U. Fines Google $5.1 Billion in Android Antitrust Case”. This case was not about tampering with Search Results — this case was about Google “abusing its power in the mobile phone market”.
“Google has used Android as a vehicle to cement the dominance of its search engine,” said Margrethe Vestager, Europe’s antitrust chief. “These practices have denied rivals the chance to innovate and compete on the merits. They have denied European consumers the benefits of effective competition in the important mobile sphere.”
The European Union fined $ 5.1 billion (4.34 billion euros) in this case. Last June, the EU fined Google “$2.7 billion for unfairly favoring some of its own services over those of rivals.”
“Google’s search engine has played a decisive role in determining what most of us read, use and purchase online,” said Shivaun Raff, a co-founder of Foundem, a British comparison-shopping site that was the first company to file a complaint against Google. “Left unchecked, there are few limits to this gatekeeper power.””
For a full version of Raff’s saga, see here.
Yes, Google dominates the Search engine field. By how much?
The charts above show that Google Search, worldwide, has over 75% of the total search traffic market share and over 90% of the mobile search traffic share. These figures are distorted — Google is banned in China, thus searches there by necessity shift to the Chinese-language-only Baidu. For rest-of-world figures, add Baidu’s share to Google’s share for a clearer picture.
Note very well, please: there is very little to be gained by comparing search results between the available search engines. Where search engines are not owned outright by Google, many/most depend on ”Google Ranking” as part of their own search algorithms, thus Google’s “de-ranking” of a web site or a whole social viewpoint affects all of them. Microsoft’s bing has long been known to “sneak a peek” at Google rankings and include them in its search algorithm. Yahoo! has a deal to use Microsoft bing’s output in its search results (“Bing will continue to provide the underlying non-paid search results and technology for Yahoo.“) So it reads like this: Google tampers with its algorithm, bing peeks at the Google results and quasi-mirrors them, Yahoo! uses bing’s results. The remaining big English-language player is Ask.com, who’s market share is so small it doesn’t even make the chart. They license someone else’s search results for general web searches, but don’t disclose who that is.
Questions for discussion:
Is it important that Google has tampered with it’s search algorithm on social, political, and scientific issues?
Is it socially significant that Google has tampered with it’s search algorithm on social, political, and scientific issues?
Is it politically important that Google has tampered with it’s search algorithm on social, political, and scientific issues?
Is it important to Science and Science Education that Google is tampered with it’s search algorithm on social, political, and scientific issues?
What are the implications for Freedom of Expression? for Free Flow of Information? for Democratic Values? for the Ethos of the World Wide Web?
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Attribution: The featured image is adapted in part from a book cover for the Orwell title “1984” designed by nusentinsaino.deviantart.com.
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Author’s Note:
This is a Commentary, meaning that it contains my personal opinions about a topic being raised in the press about Google’s behavior and changes it has made to its search algorithm over the last year or so.
I strongly suggest reading as many of the linked news articles as you have time for…I consider this to be a very important and significant issue for all users of the World Wide Web.
This is a follow-up to my recent piece: “NEWS FLASH: World’s Library Sabotaged”. The next installment in this series will cover the specific effects and implications for the topic of Climate Science — and why it matters for WUWT.
I expect that many will disagree with my viewpoints expressed above — that’s good, it means I have hit on something that readers can engage with.
Let me end with a conclusion by Adam White (his piece linked above) “… the pressure for Google to adopt ever more expansive interpretations of “exploitative,” “authoritative,” and “what people are looking for” will doubtless rise.” The pressure did rise and we are seeing the results above….Google as Arbiter of Truth, Google as Big Brother Knows Best.
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LINKS IN THIS ESSAY: [added 22 July 5:28 pm ET]
https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/googlegov
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/07/19/news-flash-worlds-library-sabotaged/
https://searchengineland.com/google-bing-is-cheating-copying-our-search-results-62914
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/20/magazine/the-case-against-google.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/27/technology/eu-google-fine.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/18/technology/google-eu-android-fine.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/20/magazine/the-case-against-google.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/26/technology/google-cats-owls.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/26/technology/google-search-bias-claims.html
https://thewholestory.solutionsjournalism.org/complicating-the-narratives-b91ea06ddf63
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/25/google-launches-major-offensive-against-fake-news
https://judithcurry.com/2017/02/26/whats-wrong-with-alternative-facts/
https://www.wired.com/2003/01/google-10/
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Thanks, Obama and Google — founders of our Brave New World.
beng135 ==> You’d be interested in the Adam White article. It is a long, but terrific, read.
Where is the Adam White article? And in the text of the article you once reference “Alex White”? Which is it? But of the many links you have provided, none of them say “This is the A??? White article.” Help?
“Where is the Adam White article?”
https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/googlegov
It’s been apparent for some time that Google’s search engine has been degraded. Specific search phrases do not return the same content and breadth of search as it did a few years ago. The political slant of returns on subjects that should be apolitical has increased. My wife’s google searches have to do with history and genealogy, looking for specific sources, etc.
Google’s politicization of returns had seriously degraded a great idea.
Bob ==> In the field of genealogy, there is a lot of commercialization — and the first return on the TOPIC search is an advertisement for Ancestry.com. The rest of the results are fairly good.
Searching phrases will be less manipulated than subject and topic searches.
If you have specific examples, I’d like to see them.
Thanks.
Increasingly when I do a search on a technical issue, Google can’t or will not provide an answer to the question. In a recent instance, it provided a list of 20 to 30 results from ONE magazine that were irrelevant to the search question. (Use of a superconductor to smooth current surge in an off grid solar battery system, on a Google Pixel). Bing provided a series of relevant answers. The reverse has happened. I am moving to use 3 different search engines for technical questions.
I think people should 1> stop worrying, and 2> get in the habit of using multiple search engines with (slightly) different algorithms.
It is time for shareholder lawsuits against the internet companies hurting shareholders this way.
People Google, they don’t search. Pass the Kleenex… I mean, tissue.
n.n ==> What the EU anti-competition case was about deals with bundling of Google Search with the Android smart phone operating system — when you search on your Android phone — it is Google. Worldwide, Android OS has a >75% market share.
Kip – I was forced to open gmail account and I get dialogue boxes from them on turning on my GPS on my Android phone so I can be tracked(?). However, I downloaded DuckduckGo as a search engine and on principle never use Google search. To me, this is the answer, not just to attempt to get broader search results but to reduce Google’s share of internet searches, bullying in the market with oligopoly commercial control, etc. Unfortunately, 75% of the people don’t care! I have taken to using “phrasing” ( as you suggest) rather than simple topic searches to try to get wider choice.
I have long noted the decline in usefulness of the internet. With the much overblown asbestos scares starting about the 1960s, it carries on through the internet. If you google asbestos, what you get is endless articles on it as a carcinogen, or class actions and legal ads. You might not notice that it is a naturally occuring mineral. The “six kinds of asbestos” was defined by the EPA! A few of the six are abundant minerals in the Precambrian Shields of the Globe. In Canada, natural rivers draining this terrain contain an order of magnitude more water borne fibres per unit volume than is permitted in manmade aquaducts. Indeed, asbestos cement fibres were used in cement pipe used for water ducts and is highly likely to be not harmful at all despite evidence of airborne hazards, but the literature is stuffed with highly speculative innuendo on the subject.
Searching for WUWT, you often get a Wiki article first saying that its a site run by Watts for spreading anti-science climate propaganda on the internet. They even purloin the WUWT masthead and their dot com address without the https to bilk searchers. They gratuitously toss in “financed by fossil fuel interests”.
The flamboyant fake news investigators are propagators of most of the fake news. The fact checkers are experts at obfuscation of their targets. I’m glad to see you are hopeful that it can be straightened out by citizen scientists. I’m less confident for now.
Depends on what you Google. I’m pretty sure Gore needs tissue.
http://gibiru.com
Dan ==> gibiru results for “climate change” returns 4 ads at the top, then virtually the exact same list as Google — all Consensus sites, regardless of traffic….
How about DuckDuckGo.com?
If that’s accurate … Darn!
commieBob ==> I have written to DuckDuckGo and asked them exactly what/whose algorithm they use….no reply as yet.
“I have written to DuckDuckGo and asked them exactly what/whose algorithm they use….no reply as yet.”
They use their own and “DuckDuckGo is a search engine that shows the same results for a search term to all its users.” Now that’s useful! My early objection to Google was search results were obviously tailored to suit Merkins. Google currently returns results based on the country I inhabit: Australia. A search result tailored to suit Merkins is far less useful to me. When I want to purchase something I’d rather it be local, especially when so many US suppliers refuse to sell to Australia. Find an interesting restaurant? Good luck getting me to dine out in New York! Need a taxi? Get the picture? Google does what the others can’t or won’t do.
Dear Pompous
I also found that DuckDuck does not need a qualifier to give local results. NZ is a smaller market that even Aus. but I get relevant results for my searches that are local for local needs.
Richard, I was quoting from 12 Things DuckDuckGo Can Do That Google Can’t:
https://gadgets.ndtv.com/internet/features/12-things-duckduckgo-can-do-that-google-cant-596526
None of them seemed relevant to my needs. I don’t do farcebook for example. I did try using duckduckgo, but the hits were nearly all to US sites and newspapers where Google generates mostly hits to Australian sites and newspapers. “Restaurants near me” are all in Melaka City, Malaysia for some unknown reason. My Region setting is Australia. Taxi gets me Adelaide Access Taxis, but they refuse to drive across the Bass Strait to Tasmania… Interesting, but no guernsey from me.
The linked reddit article contains a comment that says when you google american inventors, you get a bunch of African American inventors nobody has ever heard about.
Google – Google displays text from the first hit at the top of the page. It’s a list of African American inventors who changed the world.
DuckDuckGo – The first hit is american-inventor.com which has a list on its home page. As far as I can tell, none of the people on that list are African American.
For obvious ideological bias the score is (1 is good, 0 is bad):
Google – 0
DuckDuckGo – 1
NOTA BENE – I’m not saying there were no important African American inventors. There were. You could argue that one or two belong on the american-inventor home page. All I’m saying is that DuckDuckGo didn’t obviously tamper with the search result.
Lol, I think there is more to the issue than that. The first result I get when I search for “American Inventors” is a page talking about the google search results! Just by talking about it we’re changing what google shows when we search for a term.
As would a few popular sites with miss tagged photos. It loops back around on itself.
A bunch of people talking about how a search for American inventors shows more black people than they expected, and doing the same search themselves, and making pages about it, reinforces the association. Computers are very bad at any real understanding of context.
Did I just discover that Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison, Nicola Tesla and Albert Einstein were all “African-Americans”? Talk about fake news…
Pompous Git
Like most great inventors, Alexander Graham Bell was a Scot. His skin colour is less important as I believe we all evolved from the same stock. I also understand location influenced skin colour more than genes.
Yes, I know. I come from the midlands of the UK. When me dad went into the pit he was white; when he came out at the end of the shift he was as black as the ace of spades.
Pompous Git
Honest dirt then. Respect.
” Just by talking about it we’re changing what google shows”
As proof of that, I tried googling
“American inventors” -reddit
Now there is a quite different story, with nothing like he same array of faces. They come from the meta-story.
shows more black people than they expected
Philip, watch any American or BBC show, commercial or movie and you’ll see that at least 50% of the population is black….
True. The Media distorts the racial numbers of the US population
It’s politically correct, but is a distortion of reality.
We dont know who Ask.com licenses from but is there any indication that it is Google or a company that does license from Google?
Alan ==> As it stands today — any change Google makes to its ranking system propagates out into bing and Yahoo!, the second and third largest major searches (Baidu has a bigger market share than these two but is Chinese-language only).
Ask.com and DDGo are still question marks.
Ask.com’s front page runs the googletagsmanager script.
DuckDuckGo’s front page doesn’t run google scripts.
I’ve read that DuckDuckGo uses over 400 different sources to compile results.
Hmmm… I’ve used and promoted duckduckgo for their privacy stance. However, a test on the terms “climate change” gave a biased list with the Wiki, NASA, and all the usual players ranked on the top page and WUWT nowhere to be seen.
Did a search on “unbiased search engine” and got a pointer to https://www.mojeek.com/
Where, doing a search on “climate change” gave, in addition to the Wiki in a special box:
https://www.mojeek.com/search?q=climate+change
With WUWT in the second from the top slot.
I think I’ve just changed my preferred search engine…
Trump has to step in and stop this
Alan ==> Google is more likely to respond to Public Shaming than government intervention.
Any public shaming will only result in a temporary and partial backdown. They will be back to their old tricks as soon as they think they can get away with it. We need multi-billion $ fines and government supervision to ensure future compliance.
Shareholder lawsuits against the corrupt practices.
Google is part of the Deep State. Google is all in for the fight against freedom. Trump is taking the DS down. Why does G have a new CEO? You think it was his idea to resign?
Alan,
Nonsense. American courts decided long ago that computer code and algorithms count as free speech. Google’s search ranking are thus protected by the first amendment. The only thing Trump should be doing is protecting google’s right to write whatever code it likes.
Once again we see the feral chicago rat Barack Hussein Obama actively conspiring with Google and main stream media in the ‘balkanization’ and destruction of the USA. The daily news and net searches illustrates the Alynski-driven ‘progress’ that Socialist Progressives pursue.
Substantiation for my Appel-ation of ‘feral chicago rat’….
https://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2018/07/21/study-chicago-number-one-rat-capital-u-s/
J Mac — quite right, except that it’s an insult to rats…..
I’m going to have to disagree with the author here. Google decided years ago to “abandon its long-standing primary corporate policies.” Like most progressives/leftists they have only recently decided not to hide it anymore.
Like most progressives/leftists they have only recently decided not to hide it anymore.
The indoctrination in the education system & infiltration into the media, academia, justice system and deep state has gone on long enough now that it’s no longer necessary to hide.
“[Larry] Page and [Sergey] Brin designed Google to avoid human judgment in rating the relevance of web pages. Recounting Google’s original design, Steven Levy describes the founders’ opinion that “having a human being determine the ratings was out of the question,” not just because “it was inherently impractical,” but also because “humans were unreliable. Only algorithms — well drawn, efficiently executed, and based on sound data — could deliver unbiased results.”
It just appears to me that the above contradicts everything I understood about how Google’s search engine was designed to work.
The idea was to elevate any website’s search ranking by popularity, under the common assumption in today’s world that consensus presupposes valuable content. Regardless of whether one agrees with that premise, it’s undeniable that consensus must presuppose human judgment, in which case Page and Brin contradicted themselves at the outset.
Kip, what am I missing here?
sy ==> “Consensus” views are political/social, not based on actual popularity in the internet.
For instance, WUWT has an very low Alexa rating # (lower is better — based on traffic) yet has been de-ranked/demoted in rankings by Google even though WUWT 3 MILLION page views per month.
By Internet standards, WUWT is the most popular viewpoint. But Google has marked it as “low-quality” pushing it to five or sixth page of results on climate change.
They have entering “human judgement” in — the judgements of Google execs as to what is true, what is good for you to see…..
In a similar discussion some years ago, I pointed out that WUWT’s Page-rank was being degraded by the rather large number of links to external sites. There seem to be many more now than there were then.
Google has always included subjective criteria, or at least they claimed they did in the early days. I also note that you haven’t responded to my remark that websites The Environmental Defense Fund, The Daily Intelligencer and TakePart you claim are unfairly elevated to page one do not occur in the first 20, 10 and 5 pages when I search on “climate change”.
Pompous Git
Good points.
I just changed my Google search preferences to show 50 results at a time. The Environmental Defense Fund, The Daily Intelligencer and TakePart don’t show in the first 100 hits.
Kip
This comment is patently untrue as you very well know. I commented on my search for climate sceptic sites the other night and found WUWT 9th on the first page of Duck Duck Go and 16th on the second page of a Google search.
The first site on the Duck Duck Go search was a sceptics site. The first site on the google search was skepticalscience, not unreasonable depending on the traffic, and domain name rating.
As I said in that post, considering the mass of pro AGW consensus science, the biased media, and an apparently manipulated Google, I’m astonished that WUWT featured as high in the Google rankings as it does. Imagine if Anthony had a PR budget.
I understand from sycomputing the Google algorithm is freely available to all webmasters (I was told otherwise) so what is to stop anyone interrogating that algorithm and adjusting all a websites parameters to favour it.
sycomputing
After a couple of emails and a phone conversation or two last night, I was told that the workshops on SEO, even those run by Google, reveal nothing of the algorithm. And for very good reasons.
Firstly, it’s IP protected therefore it can’t be revealed even if it’s entirely benign, for commercial reasons. Secondly, Google’s entire business is predicated on the algorithm, why would they reveal it to all and sundry? Thirdly, it now represents a national, if not a global security issue. Every Tom Dick and Harry gets hold of the algorithm and alters it to their own requirements, as does everybody else. The internet would be utterly chaotic.
I understand from sycomputing the Google algorithm is freely available to all webmasters (I was told otherwise) so what is to stop anyone interrogating that algorithm and adjusting all a websites parameters to favour it.
You misunderstood me or I wasn’t clear enough. What I said was they weren’t shy about telling webmasters how it worked, i.e., how to get their pages ranked higher.
The math itself would naturally be a closely guarded secret.
sycomputing
Fair comment. My bad.
Bah, it’s nothing…
Say, how’s that moderation thing going for you today? I’ve got one post in response to Kip that I was really hoping to have him address…I think it’s because I placed a plethora of URL’s in it, but not sure.
Are you all fixed up now?
EDIT: Never mind!
sycomputing
I had a reply from the MOD’s. It seems when I changed my browser, no previous comments were registered. Then they found nearly 750!!
Can you imagine that? I bet about 5 made any type of sense.
LOL.
I bet about 5 made any type of sense.
Welcome to my world!
Kip:
“Consensus” views are political/social, not based on actual popularity in the internet.
That proposition seems to contradict itself. E.g., a search for “Ford cars” brings up ford.com as #1 in my browser. Shouldn’t it be the case that a progressive website critical of cars, perhaps one linking cars to AGW, or a progressive website critical of large corporations should come up instead?
For instance, WUWT has an very low Alexa rating # (lower is better — based on traffic) yet has been de-ranked/demoted in rankings by Google even though WUWT 3 MILLION page views per month.
My search term “agw skepticism” (pardon me here, I’d just post the screenshot but I don’t know if I need to edit width/height first) produces the following results:
1. My personal path to Catastrophic AGW skepticism | Watts Up With That?
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/07/25/my-personal-path-to-catastrophic-agw-skepticism/
2. Why Climate Skeptics Are Wrong – Scientific American
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-climate-skeptics-are-wrong/
3. Peer-Reviewed Survey Finds Majority Of Scientists Skeptical Of Global …
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2013/02/13/peer-reviewed-survey-finds-majority-of-scientists-skeptical-of-global-warming-crisis/#60d00b674c7c
4. The 10 Most-Respected Global Warming Skeptics – Business Insider
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-ten-most-important-climate-change-skeptics-2009-7
5. My Global Warming Skepticism, for Dummies « Roy Spencer, PhD
http://www.drroyspencer.com/my-global-warming-skepticism-for-dummies/
6. Arguments from Global Warming Skeptics and what the science really …
https://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php
7. 900+ peer reviewed papers are skeptical of AGW – Skeptical Science
https://skepticalscience.com/skeptic-peer-reviewed-papers.htm
8. Why I Am A Global Warming Skeptic | Climate Dispatch
https://climatechangedispatch.com/why-im-a-gw-skeptic/
9. Skeptic » Reading Room » How We Know Global Warming is Real
https://www.skeptic.com/reading_room/how-we-know-global-warming-is-real/
10. Do you know any high-IQ climate change deniers/AGW skeptics? – Quora
https://www.quora.com/Do-you-know-any-high-IQ-climate-change-deniers-AGW-skept…
The above (with WUWT as the #1 return) seems to at least acknowledge both sides does it not? Under your assumptions it shouldn’t, correct?
‘…pushed to 5th or 6th page on climate change’ – Kip, I have NEVER EVER looked for anything important in such a nonspecific way.
Wattsupwiththat dot com brings up this website at the top of the 1st page because that is how I type it into my search block.
I said this yesterday and I will continue to say it if I have to hammer it into your CPU, the MORE specific you are, the MORE easily and quickly your search results will get what you want, regardless of Giggles’ ranking of it. It does not matter one bit HOW Giggles ranks it if you use the website’s name instead of a subject matter designation.
If I want to find old TV shows like ‘Hennesy’ with Jackie Cooper, then I type in that phrase, NOT just old TV shows.
Unfortunately for Giggles, their ideas of what you can/can’t find or are allowed to find have nothing to do with the reality that people can find what they want if they use a little brain power and common sense and are specific about their search terms.
You can disagree with my viewpoint all you want to, but I do NOT have these issues that you bring up.
If Bingo and Birdbrain tried to keep me out of this website, they’d have to have a good excuse for it, especially when they allow hardcore pornography to flourish. Their arrogance is already tripping them up.
My first introduction to WUWT came 10 years ago when I really did NOT know what I was looking for. When I asked Google to search “Global Warming” (one of the autocomplete suggestions was “Global Warming hoax”) it ranked near or even at the top based, I’m assuming, almost entirely on the number of page views it got. That’s not what would happen today. When people don’t know exactly what they’re looking for, at the very beginning of their research, Google is telling them what they should be looking for, based entirely on the personal biases of the coder. And that’s a problem.
I just did the search in question, i.e., “global warming hoax” (not going to post the returned URL’s in order to avoid getting dumped into mod bin)
#1: globalwarminghoax [DOT] com (skeptical)
#2: snopes about Trump (nothing to do with the question at-hand)
#3: nasa (sympathetic to AGW)
#4: skepticalscience [DOT] com (sympathetic to AGW)
#5: calthomas [DOT] com (a conservative commentator and skeptic)
#6: wiki
#7: baltimore sun on why global warming is a hoax
#8: national geographic (sympathetic to AGW)
#9: telegraph [DOT] co [DOT] uk – title: “Climate change: this is the worst scientific scandal of our generation …”
#10: forbes [DOT] com – title: “Global Warming Alarmists Caught Doctoring ’97-Percent Consensus …”
#11: dailymail [DOT] uk [DOT] com – title: “World leaders duped by manipulated global warming data | Daily Mail …”
I’m still not unhappy with these results.
“When people don’t know exactly what they’re looking for, at the very beginning of their research, Google is telling them what they should be looking for, based entirely on the personal biases of the coder. And that’s a problem.”
Maybe we have different Google coders then. My search on “global warming hoax” gave me Martin Durkin’s The Great Global Warming Swindle at the head of the search page.
Well, that’s the rub, eh.
You have to know enough to ask the right questions.
“For instance, WUWT has an very low Alexa rating # (lower is better — based on traffic) yet has been de-ranked/demoted in rankings by Google even though WUWT 3 MILLION page views per month.”
Kip, is there hard evidence that WUWT has been de-ranked? In other words, is there a written policy somewhere that says this?
Kip is being rather silent on justifying his assertions.
First up, bear in mind that a website’s placement in a search result is a combination of Google’s patented PageRank technology and other techniques. To simplify things a bit, I concentrate initially on the PageRank part.
Kip’s claim is that WWUWT’s placement (PageRank 7/10) has been deliberately lowered to favour in particular The Environmental Defense Fund (PageRank 6/10), The Daily Intelligencer (PageRank 5/10) and TakePart PageRank 7/10). You can check PageRanks here: https://www.checkpagerank.net/check-page-rank.php
Placement depends on many things, some known some unknown. The methodology changes on a regular basis. One reason for this is that people who sell their services to assist website owners improve their ranking do their best to game the system. Google wants their search engine technology to attract the widest possible number of visitors to Google and advertisers (the source of their revenue).
Things that are known to erode placement:
* Blogging. Blogs gradually accumulate static pages. Pages that are continually updated improve PageRank.
* Links to external websites. This is to combat pages that consist of links rather than novel material.
Things that are known to improve placement:
* Links from external websites that are considered “authoritative”. While this is not well-defined, I remember well in my early days of blogging nearly two decades ago that when the likes of Jerry Pournelle (RIP) linked to my website, its PageRank improved considerably. The effect of these links erode over time. The newer the link, the greater its impact.
* Regular updates to the website.
The most “authoritative” website is, surprise, surprise, Google itself. This whole system of transferred opinion has to start somewhere. There’s no doubt that Larry Page and Sergey Brin provided the initial opinions when they devised PageRank while they were still at StanfordU. From the very outset, Google depended heavily on subjective opinion, contra Kip’s claim that it’s a recent addition.
It seems unlikely that Page and Brin continued to rely solely on their personal opinions when they continued to improve how Google works. More likely they hired a group of people who reflected the demographic of the USA to provide their opinions. Certainly in the early days, placement in search results reflected US opinion, rather than Australian opinion when conducting a search from Australia.
This latter has changed. When I search now, if I use a VPN then the result depends on where the server is located. If I choose a server in the USA, “restaurants near me” are in Los Angeles where NordVPN has its US server. If I choose to use my ISP then I get hits for restaurants within walking distance, rather than requiring me to renew my passport and fly overseas.
As I stated at the outset of this rant, there’s more to placement than PageRank. Browser history, for example, gives the Google engine information to more closely align search results with the searcher’s personal preferences. Both PageRank and the other techniques that Google uses to improve relevance in search results change regularly. It’s what keeps ~90% of web users coming back for more. While reflecting on this yesterday, I revisited some old search engines and discovered some new ones. The new ones succeed by being highly specialised and it’s nice to know they are there when I need them. Using DuckDuckGo to search on “global warming” led me to an Amazon page selling knives as the number one hit. Go figure…
I do miss having the ability to search for old pages on my blog using Google. And WUWT for that matter.
Kip is far from the first person to object to Google exercising their First Amendment rights. “PageRanks are opinions — opinions of the significance of particular Web sites as they correspond to a search query….the court concludes Google’s PageRanks are entitled to full constitutional protection.” See: https://www.out-law.com/page-3609
Interesting post. Many thanks.
When I search now, if I use a VPN then the result depends on where the server is located. If I choose a server in the USA, “restaurants near me” are in Los Angeles where NordVPN has its US server. If I choose to use my ISP then I get hits for restaurants within walking distance, rather than requiring me to renew my passport and fly overseas.
Would you agree that this and the utilization of browser history appears to “subjectify” Google search results to the individual user? I remember some years ago when it was announced that Google was intending to tailor results to individual users based on their browser/search history, there was a bit of an uproar, however, such a methodology serves Google very well if their intent is to service their own customers purchasing advertisements on their platform.
Such a methodology would also seem to contradict Kip’s contention, in that for example if a certain user is politically conservative and therefore repeatedly searches for information related to conservatism, are we to believe that Google is deliberately going to attempt to thwart that user’s search results in the interest of their definition of “social justice”, or are they rather going to serve their conservative customers by offering ads from those customers tailored to that particular user who has already or might be interested in the same? I personally have to believe the latter.
The new ones succeed by being highly specialised and it’s nice to know they are there when I need them.
Would you mind sharing?
Using DuckDuckGo to search on “global warming” led me to an Amazon page selling knives as the number one hit. Go figure…
Well the apocalypse and what-not…
Would you agree that this and the utilization of browser history appears to “subjectify” Google search results to the individual user?It must pretty much by definition. The only truly “objective” way to serve up results is to randomise them. The tendency is for individuals of a certain type who believe their POV is objective while everyone else’s is subjective.
such a methodology serves Google very well if their intent is to service their own customers purchasing advertisements on their platform. Indeed, this is how the service is paid for. It’s called monetisation. Don’t want to be monetised by Google? Go use another service where you will still be monetised, but not necessarily in the same way. If monetisation doesn’t occur, then there’s nothing with which to pay the bills, the salaries, equipment and so on.
are they rather going to serve their conservative customers by offering ads from those customers tailored to that particular user who has already or might be interested in the same?
That’s certainly what Google wants the advertisers to believe. It would seem oddly perverse of them to do the opposite. Targeted advertising is still a bit naff, but I suspect it’s going to rapidly become more effective.
Would you mind sharing?
Not at all. Say goodbye to Google: 14 alternative search engines:
https://searchenginewatch.com/2016/02/25/say-goodbye-to-google-14-alternative-search-engines/
The ones I found interesting because it was the first time I’d come across them are near the bottom.
I have a sufficiency of knives including Wüsthof, Dick and Icel. After more than 50 years of enthusiastic home cooking it would be surprising if I didn’t.
לחיים (lkheym)
Now, how in the world did you know I’m to begin introductory Hebrew next week?
Is that you, Dr. Cathey? The handle certainly fits you sometimes!
🙂
Many thanks for your time and the link!
Serendipity I’m afraid. I’m not Dr Cathey, nor do I possess ESP. I don’t even speak or understand Hebrew. My father was Ashkenazim , but not my mother so I’m not technically a Jew even. I do however inherit several genetic disorders from dad that I really would rather not have. OTOH I inherit an extra dollop of IQ so it’s not all bad.
Thanks for that excellent post and explanation, Pompous Git. Much appreciated.
You’re welcome Tom. I find that writing an explanation has the salutary effect of clarifying my thoughts.
Ditto wikipedia:
https://anonhq.com/beware-wikipedia-never-trust/
BTW, try to find this expose’ on the google culture via google.
QED.
Interesting, but beware anonhq, which has an anti-corporate agenda.
Works for me. Maybe Google hates you. And Kip Hansen…
Pompous Git
Hmmmm……As a crumb of confirmation, I wrote a Wikipedia page on my late father, a minor celebrity in the Far East in the 1960’s.
I included a number of photographs of his exploits in motor racing, all of which I own as part of my inheritance.
Whilst the text remains unaltered, all the photographs were taken down and I was informed it was because I couldn’t provide proof of ownership.
I wrote to Wikipedia, as best I could considering their protracted and confusing contact process, and several years later am still waiting for a reply. Nor am I able to upload photographs to replace those taken down.
HotScot, I wasn’t querying whether Wikipedia is controlled by scumbags. Just the claim that Google was preventing discovery of their nefarious activities.
Pompous Git
That’s reasonable.
HFS! This is the Foundation and skeleton for building the “MATRIX”. They aren’t advancing artificial intelligence, they’re constructing artificial reality.
DuckDuckGo is better for climate results than Google. I use DDG as my default. It is not as good as Google for some things, but you can always prefix a search with “!g” to get the Google result if the DDG isn’t sufficient. 90% of the time, DDG is fine though. The main thing I miss is the Google maps integration.
Friend ==> What does it tell you that adding a special character to the search request at DDGo returns Google’s results?
It doesn’t tell me anything. It is just a useful feature that DDG has.
https://duckduckgo.com/bang
Friend ==> Oh, I see, it is just a re-direct — so that one doesn’t have to switch their browser search engine — cute feature.
DDG letś you choose which map provider you want to use. Of course Google maps is also available.
Personally I prefer OpenStreetMap.
https://duck.co/help/features/maps
The quote below has been attributed to a British novelist and scriptwriter Donald James Wheal who apparently went by several pseudonyms including Dresden James, Donald James and Thomas Dresden….
“A truth’s initial commotion is directly proportional to how deeply the lie was believed. It wasn’t the world being round that agitated people, but that the world wasn’t flat. When a well-packaged web of lies has been sold gradually to the masses over generations, the truth will seem utterly preposterous and its speaker a raving lunatic.”
Somehow, I think of the corporate biases built into Google’s search engine whenever I read the quote above. In my view, the smartest people are the ones that question society’s commonly held beliefs.
CD ==> We see this “When a well-packaged web of lies has been sold gradually to the masses over generations, the truth will seem utterly preposterous and its speaker a raving lunatic.” in today’s conflict over climate change.
Read Amanda Ripley’s piece (linked in the essay).
CD in Wisconsin
“corporate biases built into Google’s search engine”
It’s a corporate entity with one objective, to make money for its shareholders. It’s not a social enterprise.
I’m pretty certain it’s shareholders are Capitalists, through and through. Capitalist investors are inherently wary of getting involved with political movements, they inevitably fail. To suggest Google is somehow a nest of socialist conspiracy theorists is becoming less credible to me with each article Kip posts.
This would not be the first CEO, or even Board of Directors, that acted out of personal bias despite adverse effects to stockholders, since after all they’re so all-fired convinced that their views and only their views are the best for all humanity and thus their shareholders as a subset of humanity. Witness GE as just one example.
Red94ViperRT10
Oh please, give it a rest.
the majority of companies on the planet are run legally and ethically. Why would Google be any different?
I hate to say it, but the majority of the companies on the planet are run by homo sapiens with exactly as many ethical view points as there are companies. Some companies have smart, intelligent leaders, others not so much, particularly when they have someone running interference when they do something immoral (in an ethical sense). This tends to occur where there is big government, but I’m sure that’s only coincidence. Consider plastic in the waterways, melamine derivatives in milk products, diesel fuel in cooking oil, pipelines deliberately sabotaged (producing 200 million gallon spills look up Belarus oil spill), and more for a clear sense of the problem.
Most people don’t try to cheat others, nor do they try to steal normally, but there’s a reason people used to ask how much the butcher’s thumb cost per pound. There’s also a good reason for caveat emptor.
I hate to say it, but the majority of the companies on the planet are run by homo sapiens with exactly as many ethical view points as there are companies.
You sure about that Briggs? I suspect there are somewhat more ethical viewpoints than companies given that some have one for internal use only and another for external use. YMMV of course. How ya keepin?
Cmdr. Briggs ==> And given the assumptions in the Google.gov article by Adam White, and the recent EU fines, what would you say the probability is of Google acted to squash competition in the Search business?
???
Everyone knew the world was round. Washington (a raving lunatic?) Irving’s 1830 biography of Christopher Columbus is the source of the notion that people thought the earth was flat. Columbus’ Great Belief, erroneous as it was, was that the earth was considerably smaller than believed. The size of the earth had been fairly accurately known for many centuries. When Columbus found the West Indies, he thought his theory of a smaller earth was vindicated.
Columbus had a Venetian map , a fake map which showed Cipango where Mexico was found. So Venetian fake news (Marco Polo’s diaries) . Venetians were sure Columbus would die and the mission would be lost at sea. Just imagine their horror at the actual result – Columbus derangement syndrome! To this day he has not been forgiven for changing all of history.
The reference to “flat” is to Eratosthenes . Most refused to listen, but the Pharaoh did and launched the circumnavigation mission led by Maui and Rata, as the calculated diameter was quite accurate.
2nd google search result for “Kip Hansen” – “Kip Hansen’s badge of dishonour | HotWhopper”.
I’ll take that as proof of thesis.
peyelut ==> Good point — HotWhopper, a “climate consensus” scandal and ad-hom site — with almost no traffic — gets a #2 on my name, rather than my essays at WUWT and judithcurry.com, which have much higher popularity ratings according to Alexa.
I rather liked the HotWhopper piece on me (they did TWO) — re-assured me that i was making a difference and boosted my ego. I thanked Miriam for it.
8- )
A few of years ago I did a search for one of my past comments. The 2nd or 3rd page had a link to “HotWopper”. I’d never heard of HotWimper before. I clicked on it.
That post said a comment I’d made (not the one I was looking for) was her top example, in that post, of stupid comments made on WUWT.
But she then went on to berate what other commenters said. She concluded by saying maybe I wasn’t so stupid after all. 8- (
Try a search for a prominent skeptical scientist. It’s enlightening.
https://www.therightinsight.org/Not-so-subtle-Influences-Search-Engine-Bias
I’d say it’s the Western World’s most influential gateway. It can’t be accessed in China under normal circumstances, for example.
R. Shearer ==> Correct — and point made in the essay. Without some fancy footwork, Chinese citizens in China can not access Google….despite being censored in China, Google is still the world’s most influential gateway to the internet.
Sorry, I skipped right over that. In any case, I learned that by personal experience.
All searches there are incredibly slow and filtered and a real impediment to efficiency, but at the same time a relative advantage to open societies.
So which one’s the alternate reality?
I don’t want to end up in the ‘wrong’ wonderland.
I’m not as concerned as some about the way Google chooses to devalue its brand.
Their real success came from eliminating spam, or, more correctly, reducing it to acceptable levels. Sure, they can downgrade individual sites they don’t like. But it’s hard work to get them all, or even some of them. They would really, really prefer not to exercise their political biases that way because their power is not as great as many would like to think. And they know it. Plus, there isn’t even any one at Google who fully understands how their whole algorithm works.
In short, they have implemented algorithms to downrate pages which are excessively repetitive and copying text from elsewhere, in the many forms that can take. They know that is the basis of their success. Tinker with that algorithm at your peril.
Guess what? I’ll bet Swiss Francs for Venezuelan bananas that global warmers are more likely to fall into the spam category than climate sceptics. It is one of those self-evident truths. As one of the climate infidels, Google still serves me up pages from other climate infidels.
The number of adult naifs who go to Google asking about global warming, but not already having an opinion about what they might want to receive, is vanishingly close to zero. This is why so many activists focus on the very young.
michael ==> Your point is about one of the positive changes Google has made in the last few years — but is not about what this recent change is about.
You seem to be stuck on a climate-centric wavelength.
Climate and climate change are not really very important issues — but Google has messed with the topic ratings of many societal/political issues — read the questions at the end of the essay and answer them for yourself.
I think the points I made are equally valid for non climate-related matters.
Google’s intentions are seemingly not good. But, like Sauron and Voldemort, much of their power actually comes from people fearing they are more powerful than they really are.
It does make you wonder why they needed a reminder not to be evil though.
Does anyone else have to struggle with that, or need a constant reminder to not let their inner psycho prevail?
lol
great point.
Much ado about nothing.
If you really want an unbiased text search machine then migrate from
Microsoft operating system
to unix
and build your own Google, based on
https://www.google.at/search?client=ms-android-samsung&ei=z2ZTW5vPO8KPmgWS0Kb4Cg&q=unix+awk+script+processing+&oq=unix+awk+script+processing+&gs_l=mobile-gws-wiz-serp.
_____________________________________________________
The difference:
in unix awk script processing it’s maybe hours to build the appropriate search algorithm.
in Google it’s seconds to get the asked for results.
johann ==> if only it were that easy…..
Kip you’re right.
It’s not that easy.
Thanks for acknowledging.
Perhaps adding 150 acres of server farms would help!
Its the explanation of why, in the US but not in other countries, views about scientific issues can be predicted from political outlook. So for instance on climate, Republicans generally are skeptics and Democrats alarmists. Republicans oppose Paris, Democrats are in favor.
The debate in the US, but not elsewhere, has consisted of ‘progressives’asserting policy recommendations, citing scientific evidence in favor, and then accusing their policy opponents of being anti science. The opponents then predictably move the debate onto what exactly the science is, then people who take differing views of the scientific issues are called ‘deniers’ and so on.
In the end we have neither intelligent debates about what the science is, how certain it is, what needs to be done to clarify it, what the objections are to various theories, how settled it is…. Nor do we have intelligent debates about what policies to follow.
Of the two, probably the most serious damage is being done to scientific inquiry, which has increasingly turned into the effort to find bad reasons for views that one adopts out of political stance. We see it for instance in the question of hereditary abilities and characteristics: the right being persuaded of heredity, the left that its all nurture. In gender, we see it in the view that its scientifically correct to think that gender is fluid and that men can be turned into women through surgery and hormones, and that gender typical behavior is entirely cultural in origin. These are all topics that cannot be discussed any more in a detached scientific way, because we have essentially come to believe that some views of the facts are evil, it is wicked to think that the world may be a certain way.
I don’t know how to get out of this, and back to science as inquiry. A first step though might be to recognise that this is a peculiarly American malaise. In Europe and the rest of the world, you cannot predict a man’s views of climate science if you know what party he votes for. This is an American problem, a very serious one, and will have to find an American solution.
Adam White’s piece is very insightful on all this.
” In Europe and the rest of the world, you cannot predict a man’s views of climate science if you know what party he votes for. ”
As a matter of fact you can, at least in Europe. It might not look that way, but that is only because “the Swamp” has very nearly complete control of the MSM. In Sweden for example if you question e. g. the official views on climate or immigration you are very likely to lose your job and have a fair chance of being indicted for hate speech (“hets mot folkgrupp”). And remember – in Sweden it is the political parties that appoint jury members.
michel ==> You’d like Amanda Ripley’s piece — which is meant for journalists.Linked in the essay.
Thank you, Kip.
I don’t trust any of ’em. I never did and I never will.
The “fake news” meme is itself fake news, because the problem is seldom erroneous facts, rather it is the deployment of those subsets of the facts that confirm a pre-ordained or desired conclusion, ignoring or casting doubt on the other subset of facts.
climanrecon ==> Mostly right. There is, of course, Real Fake news — news made up whole cloth.
The there is CNN-style fake news — news built around something intentionally misunderstood, then misrepresented.
Then there ids, as you point out, one side of a polarized issue calling the other side of the same issue “fake news”.
Google has begun labeling sites that have “Google-disapproved viewpoints” fake news and re-ranking them to bury them.
You might like Amanda Ripley’s piece linked in the essay or my piece at judithcurry.com, also linked in the essay.
Ah, sound like a hands-on application of the practice of Rhetoric, which as we know, does not involve Logic.
No, there are in fact people who just make stuff up, and it is actual fake-news.
What you are talking about there is ‘biasing’, which is totally different.
….that is exactly “fake news”….
This would explain why the September Porto Climate Conference does not show up in Google, but does in Dogpile at https://www.portoconference2018.org/
Works fine for me. Maybe it’s because I’m in Tas mania…
Is Tasmania plugged in?
Dunno. Does it matter?
howard-
I found it depends on the exact search term you use. (by the way I always use google advanced search) When I searched for “porto conference” I got lots of entries. When I searched for “porto climate conference” I got nothing.
Searching on “September Porto Climate Conference”, the WUWT page came in at numero uno. “Porto Climate Conference” however came seventh. Maybe we just found a way to overcome Google’s disdain for WUWT!
” Maybe we just found a way to overcome Google’s disdain for WUWT!”
If you use quotes (often a good idea), “Porto Climate Conference” get WUWT at #1. In fact it is about the only response. Otherwise you get the problem that Google gives preference to a major July conference in Porto, featuring Pres Obama as keynote speaker, over the September one, featuring Lord Monckton. Exactly as it should.
Obama as keynote speaker, over the September one, featuring Lord Monckton. Exactly as it should.
Why? Obama doesn’t hold a candle to Monckton in regard to intelligence. Obama’s major skill is smooth-talk (as long as he has his prompter), but even w/that he falls short of Monckton.
I share your opinion. Surprised several of my friends when asked: “Who would you most like to invite to dinner?” and I answered: “Chris Monckton.” The relative intelligence of Obama versus Monckton is completely irrelevant to a Google search that depends on the collective opinion of the hoi poloi with modification from the searcher’s browser history and other factors.
Yep. Regardless of my opinion of Obama or Monckton, you have got straight to the heart of the issue.
you have got straight to the heart of the issue.
Thanks. I try to. It helps to simplify things, but not to the detriment of understanding. While Kip portrays this as a poor, oppressed couple of workers versus the Giant Google, and I’m sure this part of the story is reasonably accurate, it leaves too much out. The elephant in the room is Microsoft. MS’s Bing is far less successful than Google and MS have decided it’s easier to fight Google through government intervention than by writing better code. I wonder what gave them that idea.
Having failed with the FTC, where better than the EU Commission where the bar is set much lower? I don’t have any skin in this game. I use Google for the simple reason it works well for me; much better than Bing. I use Windows 7 (much to the chagrin of MS who want me to use Win10) because it works well for me. Long may both prosper…
I did a goggle search for “best websites about climate change” and found almost no mention of the most viewed site, i.e. Watts Up With That. Even lists of 100 websites about climate change failed to mention WUWT. The only mention I could find in the first page of results was on the Quora website. In the first answer to the question, “What are some of the best websites about climate change in the World Wide Web?”, Jean Vidler puts the following blogs at the bottom of her list:
judithcurry.com < a "lukewarmist" who agress AGW is happening but is sceptical about how bad it will be. One of the best informed sceptic.
wattsupwiththat.com < the most popular denier blog.
It doesn’t matter if there are other search engines if nobody uses them.
The problem is the same as if all the Main Stream Media (MSM) were owned by one person. It would be very bad for democracy.
Even if I’ve never watched Fox News, I still say thank God for Fox news.
(trigger warning) Noam Chomsky thoroughly documented the fact that, for the first part of the Viet Nam war anyway, the MSM effectively spouted the government line without any coercion or censorship. link* After all, the freedom of the press belongs to the guy who owns the press.
*I’m almost alone in my interpretation of that book. He pointed out that the average American had little chance to know what was really happening in Viet Nam at least in the beginning.
commieBob ==> Thanks for the link to the London School of economics paper.
As for Viet Nam — I was a university-based radio journalist 1967-1969…….we didn’t spout the government line… 🙂
commieBob:
“It doesn’t matter if there are other search engines if nobody uses them.”
______________________________________________________
Yes:
no competition no verification:
keine Konkurrenz keine Überprüfung.
“It doesn’t matter if there are other search engines if nobody uses them.”
Presumably no-one uses them because they like Google best. How do you propose to disrupt that, and why?
Darn good question.
Before Fox News we had an acknowledged left wing bias in the news media. Fox News restored some balance that had been missing for a long time. I would say that’s a good thing for democracy. link
Suppose that Google could control all the information that everyone gets. It sounds like Pravda and Izvestia. It would be the Soviet wet dream.
Suppose that could happen. It would be a good idea to control it, would it not? The trouble is that, when we try to control something like that, we usually discover the law of unintended consequences … again.
The civil courts are unable to control defamation and unbalanced coverage by news media, so that’s out.
Maybe something like common carrier legislation could be crafted such that dissenting views could have a chance. That sounds unwieldy.
How about … no tax deductions for google ads? You could still buy a google ad but it wouldn’t count as an expense. That would encourage businesses to advertise in local media. That would hit Google where it hurts them most. That might encourage diversity.
The real answer to your question is: I have no idea.
“It doesn’t matter if there are other search engines if nobody uses them.”
If nobody’s using them, why do they exist?
https://searchenginewatch.com/2016/02/25/say-goodbye-to-google-14-alternative-search-engines/
You mean like Bezos buying the WaPo, Warren Buffet controlling ABC?
“Noam Chomsky thoroughly documented the fact that, for the first part of the Viet Nam war anyway, the MSM effectively spouted the government line without any coercion or censorship.”
He must have been talking about the time before the middle 1960’s because the MSM was definitely anti-war biased in the later years.
I believe the Vietnam war is what polarized the Media and caused them to start blatantly taking political sides. They have continued their partisan political bias to this very day.
Well there’s always baidu.com and yandex.com.
Both are now noticeably better than google, at least on climate-related searches. Yandex has always had better coverage of Russia and Eastern Europe.
You too can collude with China and Russia!
Sorry state of affairs when a Russian oligarch is more committed to free speech than American oligarchs.
The American oligarchs controlling media and commerce are much more troublng than the Russian oligarchs…
tty ==> are you getting baidu.com in English?