Google news page trashes Kerry

[DaveSZ]

http://news.google.com/news?num=30&hl=en&edition=us&ie=ascii&q=John-Kerry

[Radical Activist]

1. Wow

That is pretty bad. The fourth headline is even about al-qaeda backing Kerry. I guess we know who the CIA wants to win.

[DaveSZ]

2. Who owns google?

Is it owned by a group of wingnuts or what?

[shraby]

3. It's

a satirical piece.

[DaveSZ]

4. Yes

Yes that's true, but most of the other headlines are pure slander as well.

[Radical Activist]

11. True, but

just scanning down and reading the headlines makes an impact. The (satire) disclaimer is rather small.

[Radical Activist]

12. Computers do what you tell them to do

Even if it involves mathematical formulas.
Here's a link about who owns google and their right-wing connections:

http://www.google-watch.org/bigbro.html

[KittyWampus]

20. Thanks For That Article Radical, I Had NO IDEA!

how do you disable cookies?

[kiahzero]

23. This site is just silly

If we're not lucky, we will be uploading our websites to Google's servers by then, much like the bloggers do at blogger.com (which was bought by Google in 2003). It would mean the end of the web as we know it.

And lo, the search engine became our ruler, and we were ownz0red. :eyes:

Their approach to ranking is anti-democratic, in that already-powerful pages are mathematically granted extra power to anoint other pages as powerful.

Um, no shit. This is what's called a well-designed algorithm. Taking every page it stumbles across as equal would make it ludicriously easy to "bomb" the search engine, making it less effective.

But since when has logic gotten in the way of a good conspiracy theory?

Increasingly, Google is customizing results based on your IP number. This is referred to in the industry as "IP delivery based on geolocation."

The horror! The horror! I can get results based on a rough location, so if I'm looking for restaurants, it's more likely to give me local results. Why can't Google suck... why does it have to give me relevant search results?

Matt Cutts, a key Google engineer, used to work for the National Security Agency. Google wants to hire more people with security clearances, so that they can peddle their corporate assets to the spooks in Washington.

Oh no! He used to work for the government! He must be evil!

[corporatewhore]

5. the fourth site is a RW satire site

[coloradodem2005]

6. They trash Bush a lot as well.

[LSdemocrat]

7. The entire Google News website is computer generated

There actually is no human involvement in the process. It uses a similar search algorithm to the one it uses to generate regular google search results except using recent news articles.

I really don't know what sort of formula it uses to rank articles. Maybe you just searched at a bad time or some of these convervative "news" sites have found a way to "google bomb" the Google News site.

[TahitiNut]

10. "Click throughs" have some impact on Google selections.

Although their algorithms are proprietary (closely-guarded), it's accepted that increased click-throughs will elevate sites in a search.

[theoceansnerves]

8. how?

as much as i have problems with google for their disregard for your privacy, their news page is automatically generated, just like the rankings are automatically determined.

[charlie]

9. Naw

Google News monitors a lot of opinion sites (including this one), as well as straight news. The ones that have most recently updated on an news item are the ones that get floated to the top. You just caught the page at a time when a couple of wingers sites and a satire site are the freshest posts.

[flaminbats]

13. I just did a search on George-Bush...

GOOGLE should be renamed BUTTLICKER http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&edition=us&ie=UTF-8&q=George-Bush&btnG=Search+News

Time to start using Yahoo again!

[DS1]

14. This is deceptive

This is the Google News Homepage

http://news.google.com

However, I can make it trash anything

http://news.google.com/news?num=30&hl=en&edition=us&ie=UTF-8&q=idiot+bush

[flaminbats]

15. But not by simply typing in George-Bush!

only a search with John-Kerry can deliver instant trash, not random information or latest breaking news on one of the two Presidential candidates.

[althecat]

16. The result is surprising but it is computer generated

... i.e. it has nothing to do with anybody at Google. It is perhaps symptomatic of a bigger problem however. A general media bias in favour of Bush. Google news will pick news that trashes Kerry if that news is 1) prevalent 2) appearing on highly ranked (=highly read) websites. Ipso facto what this result tells us is that bad news about Kerry is getting very widespread carriage. And that is the bad news.

Google is not the problem the TV networks, newspapers and radio networks are. Google is just showing you what they are carrying.

[parasim]

17. Google's not trashing anybody

Those stories are what simply the stories that are out there on the web at the time that you do your search. So, if anyone is trashing Kerry, it's the world wide web, not the Google people.


from the FAQ:

Who edits the Google News homepage? One of the headlines is totally out of whack.

The headlines that appear on Google news are selected entirely by computer algorithms, based on how and where the stories appear elsewhere on the web. There are no human editors at Google selecting or grouping the headlines and no individual decides which stories get top placement. This occasionally results in some articles appearing to be out of context.

[flaminbats]

18. indeed...no human editors and nobody to hold accountable.

Why does this sound so familiar?

The headlines that appear on Google news are selected entirely by computer algorithms at least algorithms cannot be political biased, right? :tinfoilhat:

[kiahzero]

19. This is the most ridiculous discussion

Am I to believe that the computers hate Kerry now?

That would require leaps and bounds in artificial intelligence programming, for one. Then we'd have to figure out how to give computers emotions. Then we could teach them hate.

Seems a little farfetched, don't you think?

[NewYorkerfromMass]

21. Kerry haters are just busier clicking the stories.

that's all.

[Renew Deal]

22. It's not googles fault.

There is a lot of crap out there. They are just a search engine.

[mrfrapp]

24. Quit the Paranoia

Google news is automatically generated based on which stories on other sites are seeing the most activity. There's no editorial bias going on with Google, it's just a search engine.