And if it is doing so, can it be toppled?
Google is by far the king of web searching, but also the most popular website editor, video platform and email host… Google has a monopoly like no other but it raises questions, one of which is: Is Google skewing search results?
Today Google controls 91.9% of all internet search. The closest competitors are Microsoft's Bing and Yahoo! both with less than a 3% share worldwide. While Baidu picks up a chunk of the Chinese market. So, Google decides which information we'll use to take our decisions, and as FullFact sanctimoniously says "Bad information ruins lives".
Google's achievement, however, is more about appearances than reality. Basically, all search engines work the same way. First of all, they don't actually take your query and search web pages. What they do is convert the query into key-words and look these up in vast indexes that they have already prepared.
These indexes are linked to cached copies of the web pages. That's why you can sometimes find your query phrase in a search result, click on the link, but end up on a page that has completely different information.
Often search engines find hundreds of thousands of results, and the real issue is how do they rank them. It is known that Google uses a system where it prioritizes websites that are "more important". But how does it decide what these are?
Some of the rules Google uses are simple.
• The closer the match between your query and the page content, the better.
• Is a search term part of the web address of the page?
• Is a search term also in the headline on the page?
Google's big idea is to look at how many other websites link to pages, and the quality of those websites. This means that if you search for information on cats, sites like the BBC will count as more important than either a cat-lovers blog - or the website of a cat expert.
In fact, for simple queries, search engines do so badly that they artificially skew the results towards known online encyclopedias, notably Wikipedia. Google in particular, often places a Wikipedia result amongst the top three. This is despite the fact that on certain topics, such as living people, or current policy debates like "climate change", Wikipedia is partisan and biased.
That's political bias. But there's another kind of bias the search engines have, which is towards their advertisers. People are concerned that they may be putting results that mention their clients above results that don't.
If you put in a one-word query about cats, for example, Google returns as the top results on the page, links to Caterpillar machinery.
We decided to compare the results of some other typical searches when done with Google and with Yahoo!:
Query 1: "Where is France?"
A simple location question that should be easily answered.
Yet when this question is asked to Google, it panics and offers as results only articles about France from Britannica and Wikipedia. When the same is asked to Yahoo!, it searches through 420 000 000 results and gives this CORRECT answer: "France is a transcontinental country spanning Western Europe, South America, the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans."
Our verdict: Yahoo! wins!
Query 2: "Cookie recipe"
When searching for this, Google tries to send you to online cooking websites. But here, Yahoo! gives you more choices, while still giving you the more important e-recipes, it promotes video tutorials on how to make cookies or some books to buy about cooking cookies.
Our verdict: Yahoo! wins!
Query 3: "Beautiful forest" (searching for images)
If there is one category in which Google wins though, it is images. Google will offer you a large and diverse selection of images and it also lets you click on them to see them bigger. When it comes to Yahoo!, even if, the "sticker" arrangement, does look nicer, it doesn’t let you click on individual photos to enlarge them but rather annoyingly sends you straight to its link, it also loads fewer photos at a time.
Our verdict: Google wins!
Search engines are most controversial though when they are filtering and skewing queries about issues that are, well "controversial". Like the current hot topic of whether coronavirus vaccines have any associated health risks.
Take the topical query: "Are covid vaccines dangerous?"
Typically, people want the search engines to reflect the range of views actually out there - to indicate (without necessarily agreeing) that there are many sites and experts talking about benefits but also risks.
Our investigation found that if you want to actually get a range of information and then make up your own mind, you may be better off avoiding Google.
With Google, the all-important first page offers ten results of a claimed 1.6 billion ALL of which point to the vaccine being safe and not taking it being dangerous.
Unusually, Wikipedia is not one of the sources.
Here are the first of those results:
Result 1 is John Hopkins University, one of the key proponents of the Covid vaccine. Yes, the vaccines are safe, the page says.
Result 2 is the Mayo Clinic, another strong supporter of Covid vaccines. The particular page talks of proof that the vaccines are safe during pregnancy.
Result 3 is the University of Missouri which says that the vaccines are safe, or at least, "severe side effects are extremely rare".
Of the ten results making up the first page, all the pages insist there are no safety issues.
So if you use Google to search on covid vaccine safety you will be very, well "reassured". But have you been informed?
If the same query is put to Yahoo!, their results are significantly more diverse. Of 16 million matches:
Results 1 and 2 are from John Hopkins again, the same page saying the vaccines are safe (so no change there) and one saying that there are some "side effects", but the vast majority are not serious.
Result 3, however, is quite a change in pace: a blog suggesting there MIGHT be some safety issues. It is a post by Brian Peckford who doesn't seem to have any expert status but whose page does include some precise references to scholarly papers discussing safety issues. One such says: "A dire danger of Covid-19 vaccines is that spike proteins produced by myriad endothelial cells, i.e. the innermost cells lining blood vessel walls, will be exported to the cell surface and protrude directly into the bloodstream."
The BuffPo doesn't know if this is correct but it is certainly part of the debate.
Our verdict: On this issue then, a search with Yahoo! seems to give a much wider selection of views and indeed information.
By our Technology office in Domfront…
When searching for this, Google tries to send you to online cooking websites. But here, Yahoo! gives you more choices, while still giving you the more important e-recipes, it promotes video tutorials on how to make cookies or some books to buy about cooking cookies.
Our verdict: Yahoo! wins!
Query 3: "Beautiful forest" (searching for images)
If there is one category in which Google wins though, it is images. Google will offer you a large and diverse selection of images and it also lets you click on them to see them bigger. When it comes to Yahoo!, even if, the "sticker" arrangement, does look nicer, it doesn’t let you click on individual photos to enlarge them but rather annoyingly sends you straight to its link, it also loads fewer photos at a time.
Our verdict: Google wins!
Search engines are most controversial though when they are filtering and skewing queries about issues that are, well "controversial". Like the current hot topic of whether coronavirus vaccines have any associated health risks.
Take the topical query: "Are covid vaccines dangerous?"
Typically, people want the search engines to reflect the range of views actually out there - to indicate (without necessarily agreeing) that there are many sites and experts talking about benefits but also risks.
Our investigation found that if you want to actually get a range of information and then make up your own mind, you may be better off avoiding Google.
With Google, the all-important first page offers ten results of a claimed 1.6 billion ALL of which point to the vaccine being safe and not taking it being dangerous.
Unusually, Wikipedia is not one of the sources.
Here are the first of those results:
Result 1 is John Hopkins University, one of the key proponents of the Covid vaccine. Yes, the vaccines are safe, the page says.
Result 2 is the Mayo Clinic, another strong supporter of Covid vaccines. The particular page talks of proof that the vaccines are safe during pregnancy.
Result 3 is the University of Missouri which says that the vaccines are safe, or at least, "severe side effects are extremely rare".
Of the ten results making up the first page, all the pages insist there are no safety issues.
So if you use Google to search on covid vaccine safety you will be very, well "reassured". But have you been informed?
If the same query is put to Yahoo!, their results are significantly more diverse. Of 16 million matches:
Results 1 and 2 are from John Hopkins again, the same page saying the vaccines are safe (so no change there) and one saying that there are some "side effects", but the vast majority are not serious.
Result 3, however, is quite a change in pace: a blog suggesting there MIGHT be some safety issues. It is a post by Brian Peckford who doesn't seem to have any expert status but whose page does include some precise references to scholarly papers discussing safety issues. One such says: "A dire danger of Covid-19 vaccines is that spike proteins produced by myriad endothelial cells, i.e. the innermost cells lining blood vessel walls, will be exported to the cell surface and protrude directly into the bloodstream."
The BuffPo doesn't know if this is correct but it is certainly part of the debate.
Our verdict: On this issue then, a search with Yahoo! seems to give a much wider selection of views and indeed information.
By our Technology office in Domfront…
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BuffPo Investigation