Google starting to think for me?
After I noticed the internationalisation quirks in google, I found several other things that seem to suggest that google starts to 'think' for the user.
If on google.com, I perform a regular search for 'pagani zonda', google first presents me three image results, followed by the regular results. If I search directly on google images, I first find images that are of far less quality than the three I got on my normal search result page. Seems almost as if they were hand-picked.
When I search for 'Jennifer Aniston' however, it first presents a set of news links, then the regular results. No pics this time.
Both Jennifer Aniston and Pagani Zonda have news items and images related to them. But somehow it decides that I would want to have pictures of a Pagani, but news about Jennifer.
(and I'm not using the personalization feature).
Another thing I noticed, when I search for the word 'gem', the first 10 results are 'compromised'. 3 out of the 10 results are results for the word 'jem'; As if Google not only wants to suggests that the word is spelled wrong, but it is so sure about that, that it makes 33% of the first results page reflect this alternative spelling (even though 'gem' is a perfectly legal English word).
This is different behaviour than when I search for many other words, when it just uses the regular 'did you mean ...' suggestion.
Searching for 'jem' first presents a google music search result, before displaying 'regular' results.
Luckily, searching for 'php' still seems to be untouched. 
I find this scary. Where google used to be a page rank based objective search engine, presenting just what it found in its indexes, it's now starting to become an engine that influences what I find, based on assumptions it makes, probably from all the search stats they are collecting.
Horror story: once the entire world uses google, they control our very access to information, and by manipulating the results based on our own 'preferences', they essentially control what information we do or do not consume. I guess this is material for a new Dan Brown novel.
Tags: google, pagerank, personalization, search
Entries (RSS)
March 27th, 2006 at 11:05 pm
I absolutely agree with your last paragraph. Google is a huge, scary tool for manipulating people. The only way out this situation is developing alternative search engines. Any monopoly is harmful and potentially dangerous.
March 28th, 2006 at 12:19 am
If google no longer gives you what you want, then you are free to use another search engine. There’s no monopoly here, just a lot of people using a product that works well for them. The reason why it works well is for exactly these scary reasons. To develop a product that would work equally well would require the developers to do what google is doing now. If you don’t want that then use yahoo or MSN.
Now why spyware programs still block doubleclick cookies, while allowing the infamous google cookie, I have no idea.
March 28th, 2006 at 1:16 am
It’s just a “de facto” monopoly, in spite of it isn’t an actual one.
March 29th, 2006 at 9:10 am
De Facto monopoly? Erm, not really… there is, quite literally, nothing forcing you or anyone to use Google. There’s no tie-in that makes something else not work if you don’t use Google. The only reason Google are such a widely-used and popular service is because they’re good at what they do. “Lead Brand” does not equal “de facto monopoly.” You use the phrase, but I do not think it means what you think it means…
You can go to any other engine whenever you wish. Yahoo, MSN, Alta Vista; feel free. I will affect nothing outside of the search results you get. As for me, I’ll continue to use Google. Because, call me weird, but I like my search engine to be *good*.
March 30th, 2006 at 12:43 pm
larry ellison - Google Search
Google picked some nice images here
…