Misusing Monopoly over Online Search - Google

What is the issue?

US President Donald Trump recently accused Internet giant Google of abusing its monopoly over online search.

What is the concern?

• Google has become an inalienable part of almost everyone’s online life.
• However, not a lot is known about how the search engine works and how it picks results.
• Google does not disclose much about its search formula because of two reasons:

1. its entire business is based on it
2. a lot of people would try to game the system if they got to know how it was done

How does Google possibly work?

• The primary factor that determines the Google algorithm is the PageRank formula.
• Under this, it gave value to how many sites are linked to a certain page.
• There are many other factors that help a page to rank well.
• These may include the URL structure, headlines, bounce rate of the page, and the time spent on the page.

• There is a whole industry that is built around trying to understand this system.
• It does this by incorporating pages with keywords and packing in other elements to help a page do better.
• But this so-called search engine optimisation (or SEO) does not always help.
• As, other factors like authority of the website and its tradition cannot be faked.
• Over the years, Google has updated its algorithm at regular intervals to prevent people from taking advantage of it.
• Each update brings some pages up and others down.

What is Trump's allegation?

• Trump alleged that Google was “suppressing positive stories” about his administration.
• E.g. the negative stories are being done by authoritative websites like The New York Times or CNN.
• The positive stories are limited to the relatively small rightwing sites.
• Given the discussed algorithm, the negative stories are likely to show up on top more often.

• Google has said its search is not affected by political ideology in any way.
• However, it has been found that 0.25% of its daily traffic is linked to intentionally misleading, false or offensive information.
• This is where it tweaked the algorithm, leading to complaints of a drop in traffic for many sites.

What next?

• Google moves towards a search format where users don’t really have to search to find a result.
• It is using artificial intelligence and machine learning to pre-empt a query and surface a result.
• This could mean results get prioritised and are hence not really neutral.

Source: Indian Express