Ever thought about whether or not it's possible to build an unbiased search engine? There's a lot out there about Google's political leanings that most are probably not aware of:
"Google's sale of adult-content ads is part of a larger set of idiosyncratic standards. These choices offer a window into the Don't Be Evil philosophy and values of Google's founders, especially Sergey Brin, who has the power to decide what kinds of ads the search engine will accept or reject. The ad policies themselves generally reflect the personal preferences of Google's founders..."
- Excerpted from The Google Story: For Google's 10th Anniversary, p. 166
To give one example of a particular policy stance, it took a lawsuit to get Google to run pro-life ads. As well, if you look at the political profile of the average Googler, it's not exactly the most non-partisan company. 98% of political contributions by Googlers have gone to the democrats.
It's clear to me that the Google, as an organization, has certain leanings. Why it accepts ads for wine but not beer I don't really know.
People aren't good at being unbiased, although perhaps computers may be better. Since Google started out as an academic project, some details of how its search engine works are available.
I'm unsure that Google the search engine shares the company biases. That said, the ads accompanying search results are likely to tilt people in a desired direction.
What do you think?
