Google’s Censorship of the Internet
Article: http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2016-06-22/google-is-the-worlds-biggest-censor-and-its-power-must-be-regulated
The article discusses the idea that Google is not only the world’s most influential purveyor of information, but also the biggest censor. Google maintains at least nine different blacklists, including one on the search autocomplete. The autocomplete feature gives suggestions as users type in search queries, but freezes on certain words and topics, including profanities and some sexual and political topics. Interestingly, in regards to the current election, typing “crooked hill” into the Google search bar will not result in an autocomplete result “crooked Hillary”, despite extremely common usage of the nickname. Going farther and typing “crooked hilla” strangely results in an autocomplete result of “crooked Hillary Bernie.” This does not occur because “crooked Hillary” is an uncommon search term. Typing just “crooked” into other search engines like Bing immediately prompts the suggestion “crooked Hillary” to appear. People are aware that Google autocomplete suggestions are commonly searched items, so when they want to search something like “crooked Hillary”, and find that Google does not autocomplete it, they may mistakenly come to believe that perhaps the search query is not as common as they thought. By simply monitoring autocomplete results, Google has the power to change user perspectives on many topics ever so slightly.
Google affects public opinion in an even more influential way through their Google News blacklist. Google was accused in 2006 of excluding conservative news sources as well as individual columnists and competing businesses from its news feed. Being that Google is the largest news aggregator in the world, having certain results excluded from Google’s search causes a severe drop in traffic to these webpages. Less traffic means that far fewer people will come across these articles and the public opinion will shift away from these the positions or ideas that these blocked pages endorse. Or, the public will never have a chance to form an opinion on certain events, given that the will most likely never hear about them.
In a similar vein, Google’s search engine blacklist has great influence, if not near complete control, over information flow. Google can lower a business’s ranking in search results, or even completely remove them from the index, greatly reducing traffic to these pages and often ruining business. According to Mathias Dopfner, CEO of Axel Springer, businesses large and small live in “fear of Google”, due to its dominance in search.
Google’s power to influence the entire world through internet search manipulation is simply astounding. Public opinion and awareness, as well as whether businesses survive or die, are largely decided by Google. Sites or companies not in Google’s favor can easily be banished to corners of the internet rarely visited, all but cutting them off from the webpage network and rendering them useless. Google demonstrates the power of web search and how greatly it affects the total network of the web.