Search engine manipulation effect: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 21:49, 24 August 2015

Revision as of 00:18, 25 August 2015

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A UK experiment was conducted with nearly 4,000 people just before the 2015 national elections examined ways to prevent manipulation. Randomizing the rankings or including alerts that identify bias had had some suppressive effects.<ref name=poli/>

== European antitrust lawsuit ==

European regulators accused Google of manipulating its search engine results to favor its own services, even though competitive services would otherwise have ranked higher. As of August 2015, the complaint had not reached resolution, leaving the company facing a possible fine of up to $6 billion and tighter regulation that could limit its ability to compete in Europe. In November 2014 the European Parliament voted 384 to 174 for a symbolic proposal to break up the search giant into two pieces—its monolithic search engine and everything else.<ref name=":0">{{Cite web|title = Google’s $6 Billion Miscalculation on the EU|url = http://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2015-08-06/google-s-6-billion-miscalculation-on-the-eu|website = Bloomberg.com|accessdate = 2015-08-25|first = Vernon|last = Silver|last2 = Stone|first2 = Brad|date = August 6, 2015}}</ref>

The case began in 2009 when Foundem, a British online shopping service, filed the first antitrust complaint against Google in Brussels. In 2007, Google had introduced a feature called Universal Search. A search for a particular city address, a stock quote, or a product price returned an answer from one of its own services, such as [[Google Maps]] or [[Google Finance]]. This saved work by the user. Later tools such as OneBox supplied answers to specific queries in a box at the top of search results. Google integrated profile pages, contact information and customer reviews from [[Google Plus]]. That information appeared above links to other websites that offered more comprehensive data, such as [[Yelp]] or [[TripAdvisor]].<ref name=":0" />

Google executives [[Larry Page]] and [[Marissa Mayer]], among others, privately advocated for favoring Google’s own services, even if its algorithms deemed that information less relevant or useful.<ref name=":0" />

== Google Trends ==