I read a fascinating article over at Ars Technica today, about how Google news appears returning bias results when you search for "John Kerry", as opposed to when you just search for "Kerry". The crux of the issue are all of these right-wing websites that Google indexes, which have no problem writing John Kerry's name everywhere, as they blast him to pieces. What is truly disheartening about this isn't that Google sucks, but rather the nature of these so-called conservative websites. I read a few of them, most notably "useless-knowledge.com". I don't know what amazes me more: that a small group of people are willing to write utter bullshit about a political rival so that their guy can get elected, or that a slightly larger group of people actually believe this stuff.
At least I can be thankful that the average voter is an idiot (thanks Tex), so they probably don't read any of this crap...
No, wait, that's really not good at all.... :( I just want this election to be over, so that I can go back to not caring.
-Andy.
I'll go ahead and start a flamewar so...
I don't need blogs and right-wing websites to tell me that John Kerry kills grandmas. All I have to do is look at his voting record at thomas.gov and it speaks for itself.
Patriot Act: yea
No Child Left Behind: yea
Use of Force Against Iraq: yea
From his own speeches, he promises to keep troops in Iraq, spend money in the same crazy fashion as Bush and still somehow cut the deficit. Add all that to his veiled references to shooting NASA in the knees and he's lost my vote.
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back to the topic at hand, I don't think that google is at fault. I have the faith of a child when it comes to google. if they are turning out more stories or pages on anti-kerry topics, that just tells me that there are more anti-kerry sites than there are pro-kerry ones. It's just reflecting the content of the internet at this moment.
It's not google's job to deliver balanced political content, but rather an accurate snapshot of the web based on your search terms.