I think HN, as a largely technical audience, should see the clear problem with that query. Of course search engines certain results when you use terms like "big tech". It's a term that is largely used by conservative groups in criticism of the tech industry and for little else, and so the bias there is hardly surprising.

Like, say I drum up a conspiracy about how the government is putting Glupkleins in the water. Since it's not a real word, the only results that'll show up will be the conspiracy nonsense that I myself am peddling. People who "do their own research" on Glupkleins by punching it into a search engine will come away with the impression that the entire community is unified on whatever stance I want purely because nobody else knows or cares enough about it enough to write their own articles debunking it.

This is the same thing here, just at a murkier scale. Nobody uses the term big tech except in this context, and so using that term to find something which disproves the context around the term is a losing battle

Top result from google for me is: "Big Tech’s Conservative Censorship Inescapable and Irrefutable" from the Heritage foundation.

that's kind of a silly meta search query, not checking for bias in coverage of climate or race or religion or whatever.

Oh the racial bias is much easier to find, just start typing for "are white people". The suggestion list is perfectly happy with "are white p" and "are white pe", but literally vanishes as you type "peo". It does not do the same thing as you type "are black peo" (...ple more athletic, "what is a blue black person", "is wearing black bad", "how does wearing black affect you"). It's like they don't think white people are people, or don't want you talking about them as a group.

If it were objective, you'd think it would try and suggest something for all queries just to be maximally useful. But it doesn't. I mean surely people have asked questions that start with "are white people" why not show the most common one, or the most controversial, or the "highest quality" whatever that is. But no, absolutely nothing.

Someone clearly has their thumb on the scale.

>religion

Nah, this one is super obvious in the lack of an Easter doodle, but every other religion gets a shoutout on their important days. Just like the lack of one for International Men's day. Google's bias is as predictable as every other (D-CA).