Lay Theism

Don’t ask Google because Google doesn’t know.

Just a little over two years ago, I noticed that Google had widely varying results in their search suggestions: http://www.laytheism.com/blog/2008/who-is-god/

Check out this radical piece of journalism hot off the press from Fox News:

Google’s search engine returns common results to most queries as you type. But the “don’t be evil” company appears to be censoring its results when it comes to Islam. …

Enter “Christianity is” and you’ll find results that, while offensive, at least indicate common discussions on the Internet. Likewise, type “Judaism is” and Google suggests other, potentially offensive searches such as “Judaism is false” and “Judaism is not a race.”

But type “Islam is” into the search engine and Google’s auto-results pane mysteriously vanishes, leading some to conclude that Google, whose mantra is “don’t be evil,” is censoring its search results.

According to Google’s Web site, the query suggestions that appear as you type are drawn from from searches you’ve done (if you’re logged in), searches done by users all over the world, sites in the search index and ads in Google’s network. …

Perhaps the returned results are so inappropriate that all results have simply been turned off, an option some Internet users label ‘cowardly.’ After all, search for hot-button items such as “scientology is” or “Muhammad is” and the results are even more offensive.

A Google spokesman explained that the weird absence of results is just a software problem: “This is in fact a bug and we’re working to fix it as quickly as we can.” But the company would not respond to requests for clarification.

An intriguing corollary: Google offers search suggestions for future tense queries as well. Ask “Christianity will” and Google suggests “Christianity will end, it will disappear,” and “Christianity will end.” Ask the same about Islam and Google notes that “Islam will dominate the world” and “Islam will destroy Europe.”

Pretty clever on the tense change.  Guess the Google engineers missed that.

Google, Religion censorship, fear, orwell, scary, search