The PointBy Daniel Greenfield

Not surprising.

Google has already rigged search results for certain Islamic searches without being at all subtle about it. But the explosive thing here is that it was a response to a specific government policy.

That takes Google out of the realm of rigging results and into anti-government activism.

Days after the Trump administration instituted a controversial travel ban in January 2017, Google employees discussed ways they might be able to tweak the company’s search-related functions to show users how to contribute to pro-immigration organizations and contact lawmakers and government agencies, according to internal company emails. The email traffic, reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, shows that employees proposed ways to “leverage” search functions and take steps to counter what they considered to be “islamophobic, algorithmically biased results from search terms ‘Islam,’ ‘Muslim,’ ‘Iran,’ etc.” and “prejudiced, algorithmically biased search results from search terms ‘Mexico,’ ‘Hispanic,’ ‘Latino,’ etc.”

Google says that these plots never went beyond proposals. But it shows how dangerous such power is. And that such power is bound to be used.

And abused.

A free internet can’t afford a single search engine.