Google has been exposed manipulating search engine results to favor Democratic Presidential Nominee, Hillary Clinton. A video from the pop-culture news source, SourceFed shows Google’s "autocomplete" function for their search engine does not display popular search inquiries which place Clinton in a bad light.
In the video, SourceFed reveals when typing in the phrase “Hillary Clinton cri” into Google in reference to her criminal investigation, the search engine fills in the blank with, “Hillary Clinton crime bill,” “Hillary Clinton crisis,” and “Hillary Clinton crime bill 1994.” These results reference Clinton’s past work while first lady over 20 years ago.
If the same query is typed into Yahoo and Bing, Google’s tightest competition, the phrases, “Hillary Clinton criminal investigation” and “Hillary Clinton criminal charges” autofill the blank.
The same correlation is found when typing “Hillary Clinton ind,” the first three letters in "indictment," into Google versus Bing and Yahoo. In Google, the phrase “Hillary Clinton Indiana” pops up. while in the other two, the first result is “Hillary Clinton indictment.”
Of course, there is the possibility of people searching Clinton’s 1994 crime bill and her Indiana campaign on Google in massive droves instead of her possible indictment. Too bad Google’s own June analytics show so far, the search “Hillary Clinton criminal” is almost 15 times more searched than “Hillary Clinton crime bill,” and also that “Hillary Clinton indictment” is currently 25 times more searched than “Hillary Clinton Indiana.”
“The intention is clear. Google is burying potential searches for terms that could have hurt Hillary Clinton in the primary elections over the past several months by manipulating recommendations on their site,” SourceFed’s Matt Lieberman said in the video.
Google has rebutted this claim with a statement to the Washington Times, saying their search engine algorithm does not favor anything or anyone.
"Google autocomplete does not favor any candidate or cause,” said a Google spokesperson. “Claims to the contrary simply misunderstand how Autocomplete works. Our autocomplete algorithm will not show a predicted query that is offensive or disparaging when displayed in conjunction with a person’s name. More generally, our autocomplete predictions are produced based on a number of factors including the popularity of search terms."
Although Google says their autocomplete algorithm does not auto-fill with anything disparaging or offensive, that is not true. Type the phrase “Donald Trump rac” in Google, and it autocompletes with queries like “Donald Trump racist rally.”
This story is just another block in the discorded Jenga tower, toppling over under the pressure of more stories surfacing, which reveal large businesses sacrificing honest public query for their personal agenda. Just last month, Facebook was found to be pushing liberal news sources, like the Washington Post and MSNBC, in their trending section over more conservative media, such as Breitbart and Fox News.
Although this practice has been labeled unethical and wrong by the outlets being censored, this is not illegal. These are private businesses, which have the right to alter how people search and find information while using their services.
These businesses have the power to change public opinion in a massive way, and there are no form of checks and balances to prevent this from happening. These companies have the power to alter opinion in their large user bases without consequence, and companies like Google have the capacity to do so indefinitely.
The only thing to do as a consumer of information to avoid this deception is to use multiple search engines to find information. Google is a powerful tool, but we have other options, such as Bing and my all-time favorite: DuckDuckGo, which does not track user information or insinuate bias.
