Government control of Google algorithms? Absolutely! Every search result should be labeled Top Secret until it is leaked to The New York Times. Google has too much power and is causing global warming. Only in the age when knowing is bad and stupid is good would this be a topic of adult conversation, yet we hear that social media, whatever that really is, has too much power, uttered by people who appear to be adult.
Google must have the only search engine on the planet, according to TV talking heads who probably arrived at that conclusion after “googling” search engines. On another browser, a search engine search yielded a list of 249 such facilities. In the Millennial Age, only certain facts are allowed to become knowledge, otherwise all safe places risk exposure to reality.
I competed in a marketplace for four decades, and the idea that one may shut out competition by simply ignoring them is beyond reason. The non-Google search yielded a list of the best search engines of 2018: Google, Duck Duck Go, Bing, Dogpile, Yippie, Google-Scholar, Webopedia, Yahoo and The Internet Archive.
Not only is Google not the only search engine, it also is not the only browser. A browser is that icon you click on to get on the Internet, and there are from which to choose. Internet Explorer used to be what everyone used, but now on my current lap top, Google was the only one that came user-ready. When all this talk of search engine oversight by the government started, I switched over to Mozilla-Firefox and found that it is faster and easier to use. Not only that, they tell you how to choose search engines to incorporate into your browser.
Facebook is usually included in the “immense-power-of-social-media” discussion which makes about as much sense as asking why wet birds don’t fly at night. I use it on occasion to check on my ego-challenged friends to find that they are having fried cranberries at Klupotnik’s Fine Dining. Facebook also needs government algorithm monitoring because Klupotnik’s serves food-poisoning medium-rare. My best one-word description for Facebook is insipid.
The underlying cause of this concern seems to be that some have the opinion social media is where people get their news and it will take careful monitoring by the government to insure that people are not misinformed. Who knows better how to watch the henhouse than a fox. Besides, if that is true, you can’t fix stupid.
It is ironic that the folks most concerned about the “problem” are those least likely to recommend government as the solution to anything. So what if Google has a liberal bias? Knowledgeable folks dealing with significant things are bound to form opinions unless, of course, they are artificially intelligent.
If there were a demand for a search engine with conservative bias for users who are allergic to liberal prescriptions, then isn’t it likely someone like Duck Duck Go or Dogpile or Bing would change their name to Deplorable Searches and challenge for that number one spot?
Absent evidence of such a demand in the marketplace, isn’t it more likely that this is another solution in search of a problem like Net Neutrality?
