Google, Helping the ‘Rich Get Richer’, so to speak
https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-google-interferes-with-its-search-algorithms-and-changes-your-results-11573823753
The attached article discusses some secretive parts of Google’s operations and the methods it uses to display search results. It appears, after this Wall Street Journal investigation, that it exerts a lot more influence over what its users are able to see than it lets on to the public. While Google claims to use ‘organic search results’, which algorithmically finds results which are most relevant to the query entered in the search bar, the WSJ investigation suggest something else. One of the listed accusations is that Google has “made algorithmic changes to its search results that favor big businesses over smaller ones, and in at least one case made changes on behalf of a major advertiser, eBay Inc., … the company also boosts some major websites, such as Amazon.com Inc. and Facebook Inc.” (Grind, Schechner, McMillan, West).
It gets worse when this phenomena of larger businesses getting higher spots is examined in deeper detail. While this example is not confirmed by Google, the article states that Google engineers decided to “tilt results to favor prominent businesses over smaller ones, based on the argument that customers were more likely to get what they wanted at larger outlets.” (Grind, Schechner, McMillan, West). According to the article, this so-called ’tilt’ towards larger businesses was so severe that Amazon products which had been discontinued would sometimes even find their way to the tops of Google searches. Google’s top source of revenue is advertising, and apparently, according to the article, search engineers at Google will share information with their largest advertisers that regards getting to the top of the search page (although this seems to have been denied by the company).
The ‘Rich Get Richer’ concept that we have been studying is clearly playing out in these accusations against Google. While we studied the concept in a world which reflects fair market values (people are attracted to click on videos which have larger number of views, since it means that perhaps the video is more trusted), the reason that this concept is true on Google’s search engine is more nefarious. Large companies with big budgets, who are clearly very attractive to Google, are able to use the strength of their relationships to help get themselves bumped up in users’ search results. This makes the playing field uneven, and enforces the idea that the ‘rich’ (in this case, large, well-connected companies like eBay, Amazon, and Facebook), will be bumped to the top of the search list, receiving more views and more user interactions, and thus becoming larger and more powerful, while the smaller companies that don’t have the benefit of being pushed to the top of the list will continue to reach small amounts of users. This is a very interesting real-world example of the ‘Rich Get Richer’ concept, that shows the rich companies getting richer due to sketchy behind-the-scenes operations.
Source Cited:
Grind, Kirsten. Schechner, Sam. McMillan, Robert. West, John., “How Google Interferes with its Search Algorithms and Changes Your Results: The internet giant uses blacklists, algorithm tweaks and an army of contractors to shape what you see.” Wall Street Journal. Nov 15, 2019. https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-google-interferes-with-its-search-algorithms-and-changes-your-results-11573823753