Wednesday, 5 September 2018

“Trump stance could be bad news for us all”, September 4.

Google does skew left in its searches.  At least my searches show
LETTER TO SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST:
I refer to your Leader "Trump stance could be bad news for us all", September 4.
You say that "Trump is blaming the messenger", when he says Google search results are left-biassed.
Well, none of us knows the algorithms that determine Google page ranks. That's their commercial secret. 
So all we can go on is search results.  On which I find Google guilty as charged.
Disclosure: I'm not and never was a Trump supporter. But it seems to me he is absolutely right about the left-bias in Google searches. 
For example, here are the top results for news on John McCain's funeral, in order:
  1. The New Yorker
  2. The Guardian
  3. Vox 
  4. The New York Times
  5. BBC
  6. Business Insider 
  7. Refinery29
  8. Elle
  9. Epoch Times
  10. Time magazine
Every single one of these is left of centre. Every. Single.One.
Where is FOX news?  Like it or hate it, Fox is the most watched cable news and its online site has huge traffic. 
How could it not be above something like "Epoch Times" or "Refinery29" neither of which I'd heard of?
Fox is not below them. It's not even on the page all the others are. Zero, zip. 
Google's code used to be "Don't be Evil". Maybe it thinks Fox is evil. 
Wait until Google gets into bed with the Chinese censors as they're about to do. Then they will know Evil. 
Google's new motto is "Do the right thing".  How about they try that: balanced search results would be a start.
[Disclosure: I own Alphabet stock, parent of Google]
Yours, etc,
Pf