This week, pop-culture news site SourceFed made a video alleging Google was tipping the scales in favor of Hillary Clinton. The video to date has been shared nearly 350,000 and spurred a lively conversation in the tech community.
The conversation, however, isn’t a new one.
It has been alleged that Google skews the rankings for all sorts of things, including its own products, in the past. To date, none of this has been conclusively proven and continues to reside online as the Web version of an urban legend.
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Today, Google spoke out on the issue:
Google autocomplete does not favor any candidate or cause. Claims to the contrary simply misunderstand how autocomplete works.
Autocomplete, Google claims, won’t show “a predicted query that is offensive of disparaging when displayed in conjunction with a person’s name.”
“Crimes” is one of these words, according to a Wall Street Journal source. The source also added that suggested queries are the product of more than just search popularity, a point the video makes when searching for autocomplete results about Clinton’s possible indictment and instead being met with results about a trip to India.
Let’s put this one to bed, folks.
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