THE GOOGLE MYTH
AN OPEN LETTER TO ELIZABETH GAULT: It is commonly assumed by what passes for conservatives theses days that Google is biased against conservatives. In one sense, they have a point. Truth has a bias. Truth in this case may be compared with the scientific meaning of theory; something that has not been disproved after multiple blind experiments. There is more to it, though, which people who actually use Google as a resource will readily admit. Confronting that argument made by people who are merely repeating tropes used by those people who are their only sources, the bias could be true if the sources listed were from a small number of news sources with doubtful credibility. Or, as once was the case, information could be kept near the top of the list by an algorithm that could be manipulated by repeated use of a desired answer. That has not been the case for some time. The former practice evolved from the pre digital media practice of astro-turfing, where political operatives fro