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Misusing Monopoly over Online Search - Google

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September 06, 2018

What is the issue?

US President Donald Trump recently accused Internet giant Google of abusing its monopoly over online search.

What is the concern?

  • Google has become an inalienable part of almost everyone’s online life.
  • However, not a lot is known about how the search engine works and how it picks results.
  • Google does not disclose much about its search formula because of two reasons:
  1. its entire business is based on it
  2. a lot of people would try to game the system if they got to know how it was done

How does Google possibly work?

  • The primary factor that determines the Google algorithm is the PageRank formula.
  • Under this, it gave value to how many sites are linked to a certain page.
  • There are many other factors that help a page to rank well.
  • These may include the URL structure, headlines, bounce rate of the page, and the time spent on the page.
  • There is a whole industry that is built around trying to understand this system.
  • It does this by incorporating pages with keywords and packing in other elements to help a page do better.
  • But this so-called search engine optimisation (or SEO) does not always help.
  • As, other factors like authority of the website and its tradition cannot be faked.
  • Over the years, Google has updated its algorithm at regular intervals to prevent people from taking advantage of it.
  • Each update brings some pages up and others down.

What is Trump's allegation?

  • Trump alleged that Google was “suppressing positive stories” about his administration.
  • E.g. the negative stories are being done by authoritative websites like The New York Times or CNN.
  • The positive stories are limited to the relatively small rightwing sites.
  • Given the discussed algorithm, the negative stories are likely to show up on top more often.
  • Google has said its search is not affected by political ideology in any way.
  • However, it has been found that 0.25% of its daily traffic is linked to intentionally misleading, false or offensive information.
  • This is where it tweaked the algorithm, leading to complaints of a drop in traffic for many sites.

What next?

  • Google moves towards a search format where users don’t really have to search to find a result.
  • It is using artificial intelligence and machine learning to pre-empt a query and surface a result.
  • This could mean results get prioritised and are hence not really neutral.

 

Source: Indian Express

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