Harsh Words for Google and Its Search Results

October 5, 2014

Who owns Business Insider? Oh, maybe Amazon, a company with arguably the most ineffective search system available to me. Just try to winnow a list of books by those one can buy right now versus those one can buy at some time in the future? Oh, right. I just read “Here’s the Evidence That Google’s Search Results Are Horribly Biased.”

Now Google is an ad outfit. Pay money and one gets traffic. Seems simple. Google also flogs its own products like the really, really popular Google Search Appliance. Google is battling Amazon in the world of WalMart like cloud cost cutting. Sigh. Is it a surprise that Google has a small amount of self interest in what it does, delivers, and presents? Who argues for precision and recall at Google?

Here’s what I learned:

An internal document recently leaked from Yelp showed how the company believed Google was siphoning off up to 20% of its clicks, directing them to Google’s results. Yelp even persuaded the European Union to reopen an antitrust investigation into the way it said Google abused its 90% share of the European search market to manipulate results. (Business Insider heard Yelp’s intervention came after CEO Jeremy Stoppelman found himself at a dinner in San Francisco this spring with EC president José Manuel Barroso, where he was able to bend Barroso’s ear about Google’s market share.) So Yelp has launched a coalition, including Trip advisor and Consumer Watchdog, under the banner “Focus On The User” to draw attention to the way Google results are displayed.

Yep, revelation. Is it possible for a merchant to influence a Yelp review? Hmmm. Is any “free” search system bias free? Any countries filtering search results or system access to control information flow? Hmmmm.

Stephen E Arnold, October 5, 2014

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