To Break Google’s Monopoly on Search, Make Its Index Public

Re:To Break Google’s Monopoly on Search, Make Its Index Public by root_axis on Monday July 15, 2019 @01:05PM (#20442822)

None of those people had a gigantic Russia scandal though, Trump did, so you must still account for this unexplained aberration. If anything, the Trump/Russia scandal had more coverage than the Hillary e-mail scandal, so it's an even more difficult aberration to explain.

Also, if I type "hillary e" I get "Hillary Emails PDF" as an autocomplete suggestion. If I type "clinton e" I get several email suggestions "clinton email PDF" ,"clinton email film", "clinton email FOIA", "clinton email download".

Please include these confounding results in your analysis

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Re:To Break Google’s Monopoly on Search, Make Its Index Public by ar-jan on Monday July 15, 2019 @01:42PM (#20443255)

I can believe Google is attempting to de-emphasize scandals on both sides. As an aside, I do get "russia investigation" as autosuggestion for trump.

I think the bigger problem is that these adjustment appear to be done manually. We know that's what they're doing to avoid racist autocomplete phrases (and reasonably so, I think most people would agree). Having such judgments made on specific political topics/events/scandals will inevitably result in political bias, especially in an organization whose workforce is so politically skewed to one side.

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Re:To Break Google’s Monopoly on Search, Make Its Index Public by root_axis on Monday July 15, 2019 @02:01PM (#20443436)

My only point is that autocomplete results for arbitrary one-off queries isn't instructive, especially because many people see different autocomplete suggestions. As I've already pointed out, its possible to find strange results for anything if you look hard enough.

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Re:To Break Google’s Monopoly on Search, Make Its Index Public by bduerst on Monday July 15, 2019 @04:52PM (#20445150)

If you type "Donald Trump Ru" into an incognito search you will not get the Russian Investigation. To GP's point, it's numerology to keep focusing on this and drawing conclusions of political bias.

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Re:To Break Google’s Monopoly on Search, Make Its Index Public by bodono on Monday July 15, 2019 @01:13PM (#20442913)

Actually both Obama and Clinton had major stories relating to Russia including the failed 'reset', the annexation of Crimea during the Obama administration, obama's "red line" of using chemical weapons in syria which was circumvented by russia, and Obama telling Mitt Romney that Russia was not a threat in the 2012 presidential debates. So yes, they have huge stories relating to russia. And your autocomplete results just bolster the evidence that 'hillary clinton email' has been made a special case and is not organic!

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Re:To Break Google’s Monopoly on Search, Make Its Index Public by root_axis on Monday July 15, 2019 @02:18PM (#20443582)

Those stories barely saw a fraction of media coverage compared to Trump/Russia. The Obama/redline thing was primarily reported as a story about Syria, not Russia. If you type "obama red line" you get plenty of Syria suggestions which makes sense.

This is the problem with search query anecdotes, it ultimately produces a subjective and pointless debate about how one should interpret search suggestions for arbitrarily selected one-off queries. There is no methodology here, and we don't even know how widespread any particular suggestion results are. Any person with an agenda will be able to cherry-pick search queries that confirm their narrative.

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