So Much for Google Searches being Based on Unimpeachable Objectivity Algorithm … staff will pick and choose search results

After all the time, search engine giant GOOGLE now says that its searches are not apparently unimpeachable objectivity, but instead subjective. Who needs google bombing when it would seem the GOOGLE does it themselves as a patter of practice. We were told that GOOGLE searches were a result of a computer program algorithm and unimpeachable objectivity; however, like everything in the media these days that seems to not be the case. In an age that no one has much confidence in the old stream media because of its bias, do we really need to follow that same failed method of operation for the web? Subjectivity and bias has palyed a large role in the downfall of  old style media as newspapers and magazine publications find themselves becoming extinct.

Google this week admitted that its staff will pick and choose what appears in its search results. It’s a historic statement – and nobody has yet grasped its significance.

Not so very long ago, Google disclaimed responsibility for its search results by explaining that these were chosen by a computer algorithm. The disclaimer lives on at Google News, where we are assured that:

The selection and placement of stories on this page were determined automatically by a computer program.

A few years ago, Google’s apparently unimpeachable objectivity got some people very excited, and technology utopians began to herald Google as the conduit for a new form of democracy. Google was only too pleased to encourage this view. It explained that its algorithm “relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value. “

That Google was impartial was one of the articles of faith. For if Google was ever to be found to be applying subjective human judgment directly on the process, it would be akin to the voting machines being rigged.