Baidu May Mislead via Search Results
May 10, 2016
Shocker. If the information in “Baidu Found Guilty, Hit with New Restrictions. Will It Go Far Enough?”, the Chinese information access outfit has fiddled its search results. Oh, my. How can search and retrieval companies ignore objectivity in pursuit of other, presumably more lofty, goals?
I learned:
According to state news agency Xinhua, the CAC ruled that a Baidu search result page “did influence the medical choice” of Wei Zexi, a 21-year-old college student who died in April from an ineffective cancer therapy he discovered via a Baidu-promoted link. The company pledged to limit the number of ads to no more than 30% of each search result page in response to the ruling.
I know that this monopoly approach is much loved by MBAs and some financial mavens. However, fiddling search results is an idea which never crossed this addled goose’s mind.
I believed and still do believe that when I run a query on a “free” Web search engine, I am getting rock solid, “take it to the bank” information.
Baidu, I assume, is simply a nail which sticks up and must be pounded down into old fashioned precision and recall.
Stephen E Arnold, May 10, 2016
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