(via Benjamin Edelman) Hard-Coding Bias in Google "Algorithmic" Search Results
But on numerous occasions, Google has promised not to succumb to temptation to bias its search results. To the contrary, Google has committed to provide users with the best possible links, chosen fairly and even-handedly. For example, Google has promised:
- “At Google we do not manually change results.” —Udi Manber, Google VP in Charge of Search Quality, April 16, 2008, in Popular Mechanic
- “Our third philosophy: no manual intervention…The final ordering of the results is decided by our algorithms…, not manually by us. We believe that the subjective judgment of any individual is…subjective, and information distilled by our algorithms…is better than individual subjectivity.” —Amit Singhal, Google Fellow in Charge of the Ranking Team, 2008, on The Official Google Blog
- “[O]ur search results are generated objectively and are independent of the beliefs and preferences of those who work at Google” —Lucinda Barlow, Head of Corporate Communications for Google Australia, 2010
- “‘Don’t be evil’ [means] providing our users unbiased access to information.” —Google Code of Conduct as provided to investors (first paragraph)
- “[W]e work very, very hard to keep the answers - the natural search answers completely unbiased.” —Eric Schmidt on National Public Radio, 2009
- “We never manipulate rankings to put our partners higher in our search results” - Google.com “Our Philosophy”
- “[O]ur crawl process is completely automated; we don’t … manipulate search results by hand.” —Google Web Search Help
- “Google’s search results are solely determined by computer algorithms that essentially reflect the popular opinion of the Web. Our search results are not manipulated by hand. We’re not able to make any manual changes to the results.” —David Krane, Google spokesman, 2004
- Our “approach to search is” “fully automated.” —Sergey Brin, press release, 1999
- “A site’s ranking in Google’s search results is automatically determined by computer algorithms using thousands of factors to calculate a page’s relevance to a given query. … Our search results are generated completely objectively and are independent of the beliefs and preferences of those who work at Google.” —Google’s Explanation of Search Results, as it stood through May 2007, as preserved by Wall Street Journal and Archive.org
As search has become a necessary part of life and a service that consumers endow with a large supply of their trust, the problems that a monopoly on the market pose increase exponentially. The near-term story of the market for information is going to be about antitrust. Period.
JNOMICS
