Google Admits to Capability of Censoring Search Results

GOOGLE, Inc. acknowledged this week that its employees do have the ability to alter search results and rankings. For a company who claims their mantra to be “Do no Evil” this is a troubling admission, albeit not too surprising. Most are already aware that Google along with a consortium of other companies helps the Chinese government (and now Australia and Italy) censor the internet in a scheme dubbed “The Great Firewall of China.”

However, for a company which once claimed to rely solely on their proprietary “PigeonRank”¹ system, a computer generated algorithm developed by Google, Inc.’s founders, it sort of makes their disclaimer at the bottom of the Google news page disingenuous.

From Google News:

“The selection and placement of stories on this page were determined automatically by a computer program. The time or date displayed reflects when an article was added to Google News.”²

During the LeWeb ‘08 conference in Paris, France in an interview with Michael Arrington of TechCrunch, Marissa Mayer, GOOGLE Vice-President of Search and User Experience said:

“..I do think there is a possibility of us looking in aggregate when we see large signals [in GOOGLE Search Wiki], you know, a thousand people deleted this result from a search, those will start to be signals that could be used in search.”³

While Google is a private company and no way bound to free speech as a public government entity would be, the fact that the company admits to the likelihood of fudging search results is a substantial backtrack on the company’s previous statements. Google rose to capture 60% market share on the false promise of unfettered search results by algorithm.

This also is troubling since GOOGLE owns YouTube the video sharing site, which is constantly under accusation by users of mischief regarding view counters, ratings, honors, etcetera. Combine the search engine dominance, video dominance, RSS dominance through Google’s acquisition of FeedBurner, and being in the final stages of acquiring DIGG⁴ for “somewhere around 200 million” and we see the old-media business model fully employed by a “new media” behemoth.

It is my opinion that as the consolidation and roll out of Web 2.0 continues, now is the time for a competitor to rise up and keep GOOGLE from obtaining monopoly. Therefore, those of us who enjoy the open uncensored access the web has to offer must make use of upstarts like BreakTheMatrix.com and Zuula.com.

Source(s): ¹ Google Inc., “Our Search – Google Technology” • ² News.Google.com – Disclaimer • ³TechCrunch “Marissa Mayer At Le Web: The (Almost) Complete Interview” • ⁴ The Independent Online – Google close to acquiring Digg for ‘$200m’