“Google CEO Sundar Pichai is scheduled to testify before Congress next Wednesday, December 5,” Timothy B. Lee reports for Ars Technica. “Google angered some members of Congress in September when the company refused to send either one of its two most senior executives — Pichai or Alphabet CEO Larry Page — to testify before a September hearing on election security before the Senate Intelligence Committee.”
“According to the Washington Post, next week’s hearing is occurring at the request of House Majority leader Kevin McCarthy, who has raised concerns that Google may be biased against conservatives—and that this bias may be seeping into the policies of Google’s search engine, YouTube, and other products,” Lee reports. “A recently leaked video showed Google executives openly mourning Hillary Clinton’s loss after the 2016 election.”
“‘The technology behind online services like social media and Internet search engines can also be used to suppress particular viewpoints and manipulate public opinion,’ said Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-VA), the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, in a press release announcing the hearing,” Lee reports. “Pichai could find himself facing tough questions from both sides of the aisle—from Democrats who are skeptical of big businesses generally and from Republicans who are concerned about the growing power of Silicon Valley technology companies.”
Read more in the full article here.
“Google has faced immense criticism for its handling of a bug that may have exposed personal data of hundreds of thousands of its users on Google+, its social network,” Tony Romm reports for The Washington Post. “The company discovered the incident in March but only revealed it in October.”
“Along with privacy, Goodlatte previously said in an interview with The Washington Post that he would raise ‘antitrust’ issues,” Romm reports. “In Europe, Google faces continued scrutiny for its corporate footprint, and some in the United States — including the president — have suggested the need to explore whether Google threatens competitors.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Groupthink is the product of lazy minds.
Question everything.
SEE ALSO:
Facebook fired top exec Palmer Luckey for supporting Donald Trump for President – November 12, 2018
U.S. Senator Warner: Tech regulation is coming, ‘the era of the wild west in social media is coming to an end’ – September 7, 2018
U.S. Justice Department says probing social media companies for stifling ‘free exchange of ideas’ – September 6, 2018
White House probes Google after President Trump accuses it of left-wing bias – August 29, 2018
President Trump attacks ‘left-wing’ Google search results – August 28, 2018
President Trump: ‘I would rather have fake news’ than censorship – August 22, 2018
ACLU: Apple’s ban of Alex Jones and Infowars could set dangerous social media precedent – August 22, 2018
President Trump blasts social media ‘censorship’ – August 18, 2018
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey: I ‘fully admit’ our bias is ‘more left-leaning’ – August 20, 2018
Apple is monitoring Alex Jones’ Infowars app for content violations as it becomes 3rd-most downloaded app this week – August 9, 2018
Alex Jones: Infowars has racked up 5.6 million new subscribers in the past 48 hours – August 8, 2018
Tim Cook sends Mark Zuckerberg, YouTube, and Spotify scrambling over Infowars’ Alex Jones – August 8, 2018
Apple’s ‘Infowars’ move thrusts tech giant into the debate over censoring content on internet platforms – August 6, 2018
Apple removes most of Alex Jones’ Infowars podcasts from iTunes Store – August 6, 2018
The Boston Globe Editorial Board: Break up Google – June 16, 2018
James Damore: Why I was fired by Google – August 12, 2017
European Union hits Google with record $2.73 billion fine for abusing internet search monopoly – June 27, 2017
Google’s Eric Schmidt wore staff badge at Hillary Clinton’s ‘victory’ party – November 16, 2016
WikiLeaks emails show extremely close relationship between Clinton campaign and Google’s Eric Schmidt – November 1, 2016
Eric Schmidt-backed startup stealthily working to put Hillary Clinton in the White House – October 9, 2015
Obama to reward Google’s Schmidt with Cabinet post? – December 5, 2012
Google outfoxes U.S. FCC – April 17, 2012
Google Street View cars grabbed locations of cellphones, computers – July 26, 2011
Consumer Watchdog calls for probe of Google’s inappropriate relationship with Obama administration – January 25, 2011
FCC cites Android ‘openness’ as reason for neutered ‘Net Neutrality’ – December 22, 2010
U.S. FCC approves so-called ‘net-neutrality’ regulations – December 21, 2010
Wired: Google, CIA Invest in ‘future’ of Web monitoring – July 29, 2010
“MacDailyNews Take: Groupthink is the product of lazy minds.”
Most people don’t have a clue as to how correct that is!
A million individuals coming to the same conclusion is one thing; but a million people agreeing because “that is my party” is – groupthink.
Yes, it is a fact Google skews political searches to the party they favor. It is WRONG. Who needs Russian interference when we have Google…
Cite evidence when you declare something to be a FACT.
Who uses Google?
Google has been irrelevant for at least a couple of years due to their internal biases leading to skewed results. It’s obvious in the medical and science fields when credentialed industry publications do not show up on the first page of search results.
I don’t know how accurate their political searches are, personally, i wouldn’t trust them for searches pertaining to any subject.
Interesting to hear the skewed results go beyond politics and affects science, as well. That begs the question, how many other industries are treated unfairly by Google?…
theloniousmac, KingMel, Mike:
“Trump’s election in 2016 shocked many Google employees, who had been counting on Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton to win.
Communications obtained by TheDCNF show that internal Google discussions went beyond expressing remorse over Clinton’s loss to actually discussing ways Google could prevent Trump from winning again.”
You won’t find this level of honesty in the liberal media. Story: https://dailycaller.com/2018/11/29/google-censorship-conservative-media/
I wish it were that simple. I bet if you searched all the major news outlets there are for Donald Trump, then randomly extracted any number of articles the vast majority would consist of negative opinions. Democrats will say, “Well of course! It’s Donald Trump.” They won’t see the obvious issue.
Google does not intentionally skew anything. Any cursory understanding of how their search works would show you this. A major portion of Google’s search results are based on who links to whom. If I go out and search for Donald Trump right now, Google will proceed to give me back whatever it finds based on the exact nature of my search. As such it will largely be diving into the mainstream media. Therefore it will obviously return little if anything favorable concerning Trump. You cannot blame Google for the heavy bias of the media. If they do a similar search on Barack Obama it will largely be favorable.
Google cannot be held responsible for this, and we don’t want them trying to make any changes to the results.
Agree the majority of search results for Trump will turn up negative and the majority of search results for Obama will turn up positive. Certainly the biased media is the culprit and level heads everywhere would agree.
I have performed the exact same search syntax on Google, DDG, Bing and others. The results are vastly different and Google repeatedly and overwhelmingly delivers results favoring Democrats and their policies. Conservative News outlets like Fox News, Brietbart, Daily Caller, Justice Law Center, Media Research and others are barely mentioned and if so you have to search toward the bottom.
Fox News has a larger audience than minuscule third place CNN and MSNBC combined. Yet you would never know it in Google search. Rush has a daily audience of multiple millions more listeners than the top 100 newspaper readers in the U.S. combined. Yet they do not appear anywhere near the top in my attempts. Stopped using Apple News because it is even worse tilting to the left biased news.
Certainly not a Google algorithm engineer, but I do know I don’t have to be a chicken to know when an egg is rotten. Disconcerting enough was the leaked video inside Google headquarters showing crying and whining employees lamenting Hillary losing the election.
The Europeans are just as concerned with Google and taking steps. Also, the Google CEO is scheduled to testify before Congress on Wednesday. As imperfect as Big Government is, certainly support common sense reforms to level the playing field and protect privacy. Right now, we have the worldwide out of control internet Wild Wild West. Suspect we may have to respectfully agree to disagree on this one. It’s all good…
Well colour me surprised…MDN’s resident misogynist and it’s chief sycophant lying troll, team up to bemoan the winning team’s unfair treatment at the hands of the media they themselves brand as “enemies of the people”.
An utterly predictable and pathetic juvenile snowflake conspiracy whine.
#kakistocracy
#irony_desert
#desert_of_denial
Well, if it isn’t User’s and the Democratic Party number one “sycophant”, Botcha. Your favorite word these days after tagging you a month ago. Run along now twit addict, have much more important ways to waste my time…
sorry to interrupt your endless partisan bitching, GoeB, but do you have actual evidence to prove bias or are you just pissed off that your orange fake tan hero continues to step in shit piles of his own making?
Perhaps you simply need to learn how to perform an intelligent search at reputable sources instead of steadily ingesting the same rabid fact-free trumpista propaganda over and over.
Google isn’t politically biased. It is profit biased. It will return you the results that are most profitable to its ad income. Duh. Just ask MDN, proud Google Adsense user for years.
“Google isn’t politically biased.” Right, their management and employees love President Trump…
tmac and GoeB, you both rely on some incredibly flawed logic to support your viewpoints. It is so flawed that referring to it as logic is flawed.
Look up any person…any topic…and you will never find a 50/50 balance. Never. However, the lack of such balance is not conclusive evidence of systemic or excessive bias. You will note that I qualified my statement because there is almost always some degree of bias unless you are talking pure mathematics or physics. Even then, there can be bias in the interpretation.
The problem in modern times is that the presence of any bias is used as justification for denying the underlying merits of the information or assertion. Similarly, the presence of any uncertainty (and an acknowledgement of uncertainty is fundamental to true science) has been skewed to justify ignoring or denying valid evidence because someone, somewhere believes something different. Those two things are posed as being offsetting, thus enabling a person to believe anything that they prefer to believe is equally valid.
If you look up “Trump” and see a predominance of negative articles, then there are a number of possible explanations or combinations of explanations:
1) Trump spouts a lot of BS – he makes stuff up and lies very frequently
2) Trump has attacked the press for as long as I can remember and has significantly ramped up his attacked since his candidacy. He attempts to discredit any source that is not 100% supportive of his beliefs. It is understandable that resentment from the press could lead to a more negative slant on Trump. But he invited it and he actually loves it because he uses it as a tool to control his base.
3) It is possible that significant portions of the news media development, aggregation, and distribution network is biased against Trump and uses their positions of power to push their message. You would like to believe that because the alternative is that at least some of the negativity is true. Strangely enough, you appear to love the pro-Trump bias of Fox News. Hypocrisy reigns in the GOP.
4) When you search, you just see what you want to see – your personal bias. If you go into this topic with the mindset that Trump is being unfairly targeted, then you will focus on search results that support your assertion.
I must reiterate – a preponderance of negative (or positive) results does not signify bias if those results are valid. The GOP needs to stop blaming everyone else for being biased and look to its own internal biases that will end up destroying the party.
I have not conducted a scientific analysis of search engine results, obviously. But common sense and my gut tells me it is certainly askew and must be looked at, nuff said…
Make sure you’re not logged in when you use Google search or your results may be biased by your search history. Having said that, Google’s algorithm may still be biased by the overall search population aggregated results.
Makes perfect sense since they track all of us, thanks…
Actually, I think the snowflakes being triggered by reading negative news about Trump probably SHOULD log in first. That way they’ll only see a soothing stream of more positive results!
Google is no better than Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft and the like!
google is an order of magnitude worse than the rest. Not that any of them, including Apple, can be completely trusted. If MDN really stands by its advice to question everything, then it should seek evidence to support Cook’s declarations which as often as not are empty promises. Actions speak louder than words. Look for example how the corrupt Trump administration released its congressionally required National Climate Assessment environmental report on Black Friday, hoping nobody would notice.
https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/418104-black-friday-climate-report-trump-waves-white-flag-and-fails-to
https://nca2018.globalchange.gov/
As you will see, the Trump administration cannot deny the massive costly risks that desertification, forest fires, hurricanes, and other climate related events will bring to bear on the USA, but they avoid quantifying it and avoid taking any precautions whatsoever to help mitigate the events or the after effects. Basically Trump feels fine covering the national christmas tree with real lit candles but is too cheap to buy a fire extinguisher to keep on hand. Un freaking believable.
This is why the US citizen need not fear his government. Spy agencies in the USA are sitting unused, retirements are skyrocketing, there is no national intelligence muscle left. The trump administration is incompetent to the extreme, corrupt to the core. It’s one digital policy is to let ISPs destroy net neutrality for profit maximization. If you have concerns about privacy or electronic security, you should be VERY concerned about the huge power amassed by the FAANG companies. Including Apple.
Ye Gods, I wish we could find the nuts to question and regulate them like Europe is, and I say this as someone that is not a fan of the happenings in the EU. This is waaaaay beyond due.
I figured there would be some conSnowflaking here and was not disappointed! 🙂 If you raise your children right, you spend MOST of the time NOT buying them ice cream and NOT coddling their hurt feelings over little jimmy calling them stupid. As a result, your kid is NOT going to like you and any random snippet you record them say about you is very likely to be negative.
Does it matter? No, because they stay and follow your rules OR leave. It doesn’t matter that most of the country doesn’t approve and are speaking negatively because he is AND will be the president through 2024. If it hurts your tender feelings to read negative news about Trump, such that you want a safe space for conservatives…. yuck, can’t believe this is actually becoming a thing… then you may want to join the liberal snowflakes and just melt away. OH, but before you do, check that tick box in the R column 😀