Google apparently responded to a tweet from @realDonaldTrump accusing the world’s most-used search engine of bias in its search results, and the Internet heavyweight is perhaps reacting in the most oblivious and tragically ironic way possible while a new White House petition, which you can sign here, has been started to urge the President to introduce legislation protecting Internet speech:
That’s right, according to Google and its apparent Sith apprentice – which literally uses the voice of Darth Vader to tell its viewers that it is “the most trusted name in news” – Google isn’t biased. But that’s where a whole industry might beg to differ. And apparently, so does the President of The United States who tweeted the following yesterday morning, prompting the CNN story pictured above – at the very top of Google News as perhaps a self-fulfilling prophecy:
Now, enter the facts:
- There is a whole industry built on basically rigging Google. It’s called “Search Engine Optimization” or “SEO” for short. Dedicated to it are its very own magazine and national conferences, as well as tech firms which do little or nothing other than work on SEO for clients.
- Like the mythical force from Star Wars, there’s two sides to SEO, so-called “blackhat” and “whitehat.”
- Interestingly, not too long ago Google quietly dropped the phrase “Don’t be evil” as its unofficial public motto.
- SEO is highly competitive.
- SEO is sometimes a cat and mouse game, with practitioners finding new ways to get their sites to the top or their competitors’ sites at or nearer to the bottom and Google reacting by making adjustments to “PageRank,” which is the name for the system – or algorithm – which it uses to sort search results. PageRank is an apparent pun referencing webpage’s and Larry Page, the Google co-founder who first came up with the system.
- Not too long ago, Google stirred controversy when word came out that it might start “fact checking” news stories. Conservatives were concerned that Google might carry out this plan in a biased way.
- A little while ago, it came out that PageRank took social media metrics from Facebook into account when ordering search results. Facebook has also faced numerous accusations of downranking conservative content. So, theoretically, such downranking of conservative content by Facebook could be negatively affecting that same conservative content on Google right now.
- Doing articles as simple lists as opposed to structured news pieces isn't too hard. No wonder a bunch of 2-bit hacks do it.
Now, bearing those facts in mind, here is that petition again.
Marty Gottesfeld is an Obama-era political prisoner. You can donate to his defense fund at FreeMartyG.com.