[WSIS CS-Plenary] Re: WSISII, Free Access to Information, Search Engines

[Yulia Timofeeva]

> Google is becoming more and
> more like a television broadcaster - it selects the content you should
> watch. If it started to alter results in a not too evident way, I think
> that most users wouldn't even notice - exactly like most users are not
> easily able to detect reality alterations made in TV news and shows.


It's true for some cases but not always. The important point is that
Google cannot „broadcast" anything unless a user submitted a request.
If it's some abstract search, let's say „war in Iraq" or „the best
computer in the world", then there is room for manipulation and no one
presumably will notice. However, if you know what you are looking for,
let's say, the information on a new member X of the wsis mailing list,
the difference is obvious and it's easy to evaluate the results (for
example, if you get a document that shortly mentions X's name instead
of his personal webpage). I'm testing different search engines from
time to time and I'm using the one that offers the best results on the
first page (at present the choice is easy – it's Google ;)

Yulia