Search has become such an inherent part of life in developed countries. It’s so ingrained that it is now considered rude to ask a question of someone that you could’ve “Googled.”

But it is important to remember that all the major search engines, no matter whether they began as a business venture or a labor of love, are beholden to the objectives of their shareholders or private owners.

An Illustrative Google Bias

The goal of this blog is not to point out every internet meme that we come across, but this one is particularly relevant to the point of this post.

Go to google (with Javascript enabled) and begin typing “Christianity is”. Notice the list of suggestions that appear.

Now try “Judaism is”.

And finally, try “Islam is”.

(No guarantees this will last, but as of now you can see for yourself that Google provides no suggestions).

Do you find it interesting that Google is choosing to show suggested searches that might be considered controversial for Christianity and Judaism (not to mention Buddhism, Hinduism, and I dunno… Wicca?), but not for Islam?

But how far can this go?

Some people have been targeted for perceived anti-Islamic sentiment, so naturally people and businesses will be inclined to take steps to protect themselves.

But what if Google launched a product which was competing with another popular product. Would they censor search recommendations for their product while leaving negative or controversial topics in the search suggestions for the competing product?

Let’s see what Google suggests we search for regarding Apple’s iPhone:

Interesting: disabled, frozen, locked up… not exactly complimentary. Sure, maybe those are based on the most popular searches, after all, we turn to Google for help, right?

So given the mediocre launch of the Nexus One, there should be some interesting suggestions based on popular searches, right?

Wow, no suggestions? This was a well-anticipated launch. Let’s get some real-time results from Twitter to see what the buzz is:

(By the way, about 50% of the Tweets on the entire page are disparaging to the Nexus in some way).

Could Google be holding back on search suggestions for the same reason they don’t want to create the perception that they harbor anti-Islamic sentiment?

Google is a Business, too.

Keep that in mind.

Tags for This Post: iphone, search recommendations, private owners, search suggestions, google, major search engines

Tags: controversial topics, google, iphone, major search engines, private owners, search recommendations, search suggestions

This entry was posted on Friday, January 8th, 2010 at 9:21 am and is filed under Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.