At least one adult Internet player with direct knowledge of search engine behavior believes it is possible, technically, that a search engine can be biased, although he isn’t suggesting that any actually are.
"I've never heard of it being done," says Booble Bob, the mastermind behind adult search database Booble.com, which had its own run-ins with Google recently. "For example, Google never blocked out search results, even when we were fighting with them."
That fight involved Booble's original home page, a clever satire of the famous, minimalist Google page in which Booble satirized Google's logo with two breast outlines for the two o’s in the name. Booble has since changed its home page entirely.
Asked whether some search engines might, for example, carry their own political biases and slant or stack their search results accordingly, as opposed to the kind of preferential listings purchased by pay-per-click and other advertising programs, Booble Bob said he knew of no such stacking being done just yet.
"I know for a fact that Google prides itself on never intervening in the search process," he said. "My personal sense is that in the libertarian world of the Web, surfers would not only abandon a technology thus biased, but would actively campaign against it."
At any rate, however, some point out that such a bias is technically possible.
"Google wields the type of power that transforms vocabularies. It has become its own part of speech," wrote Webpronews.com writer Jason Miller on May 10. "Need information on Montana militias? Google it. Though militias [can] be found, sponsored links to firearms dealers that can help you join, are not. For Google, Yahoo, and other search engines, gun retailers are persona non grata.
"That leads to a lot of questions," Miller continued. "If search engines are selective about their advertising, are they selective about other things? Are search results slanted? Is Google liberal or conservative? Why are porn ads okay and gun ads not? Recently, the subject has been broached on many sites, conservative and liberal, insisting that Google is slanted in favor of the other side. But how can it be both?"
Google has been bedeviled on occasion by surfers or Web groups trying to "Googlebomb" the search engine when search results crop up that aren’t to their liking, according to Miller, who noted a recent incident involving anti-Semitic Web page JewWatch coming up first when searchers punched in "Jew" as a keyword.
Jewish surfers reacted en masse by setting up Web pages with links to particular sites, with the result that JewWatch got turned away as the top search result for "Jew" at that time.
Google has maintained that its policies include strictures against advertising sites calling for activity against individuals or groups or even political candidates. But the company nevertheless was also accused of favoring President George W. Bush over Sen. John Kerry (D-Massachusetts) in the 2004 election campaign, a charge Google has denied even as some conservative groups accused Google of bias the other way, whether involving Bush or embattled House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas).
