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Google won’t comment on a potentially massive leak of its search algorithm documentation (www.theverge.com)

submitted 5 months ago by Bishma@discuss.tchncs.de to c/technology@lemmy.world

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A purported leak of 2,500 pages of internal documentation from Google sheds light on how Search, the most powerful arbiter of the internet, operates.

The leaked documents touch on topics like what kind of data Google collects and uses, which sites Google elevates for sensitive topics like elections, how Google handles small websites, and more. Some information in the documents appears to be in conflict with public statements by Google representatives, according to Fishkin and King.

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[–] mlg@lemmy.world 85 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Google has been pretty crap for a decade now.

I still remember demoing how easily they can manipulate people by searching "Pakistan News" and the results being exclusively all Indian media outlet propaganda way back in 2016.

I really feel like they never got properly exposed for this just because it's a search engine and not a social media, so people didn't care enough about it. Also because Google was still top of the game in most results compared to other sites back then.

[–] SirEDCaLot 17 points 5 months ago (1 children)

My thought exactly. If this was back in like 2010, it would be a real oh shit moment, The key to the kingdom has been leaked. Now I don't think anybody really cares other than SEO spammers who will game the system even more than they already are.

Google search is crap and has been crap for some time. Not sure any others are better. But it started going downhill with the Google Plus social network, when they removed "+" as a search operator so you could better search for 'Google+' that was the first time they messed with Search to further some other business goal. It wasn't the last time. Back when Google was good, they publicly said their goal was to get you off their site as fast as possible. Now the results reek of engagement algorithm bullshit.

[–] wanderingmagus@lemm.ee 3 points 5 months ago

SearXNG works all right for me, and it's free. I've also heard good things about the paid service Kagi.