Tag: Google

Filter bubble at google?

The personalization of search engine results and the networking of social networks has advantages and disadvantages. If I am interested in golf as a sport and do not click hits related to the car or the Gulf Stream, the algorithms will show me similar hits and related advertisements in the future. The more I click on certain pages, the more often they will be displayed. In extreme cases, my own website is displayed in one of the first places of the search results, because it is constantly controlled and accessed, while it is almost invisible to all other users. The device, PC, tablet, mobile phone with operating system and browser are also read out. With the same search query you get different results with different devices and sometimes different prices in Internet shops and when booking trips.
Whether this results in a filter bubble is controversial. See, e.g. Sebastian Meinek: Deshalb ist „Filterblase“ die blödeste Metapher des Internets, motherboard 9.3.2018 
In any case, I can actively counteract this as a user by regularly deleting search history and cookies, protecting the browser with complementary tools such as Ghostery, or even better, from the outset in a virtual environment. In addition, I am actively required as a user and not the willless object of the search engine: Fuck the Bubble: So bringst du deine Filterblase zum Platzen
Concrete studies on the effects of personalization are unfortunately not convincing. The Research project „#Datenspende: Google und die Bundestagswahl 2017“  has now devoted itself to this problem. The investigation is based on the search for 9 politicians and parties in Germany, which were repeated at regular intervals. As a result, it turned out that the search results differ only marginally.
The problem with this study lies in the nature of the search queries. They limit themselves to what is referred to in retrieval known item search, the search for facts that you already know. The meaningfulness is therefore very limited. The consequences of personalization under which circumstances on the supply of information can not be clarified.

Alternative Search Engine 1: Privacy

In the german computer journal Computerbild 6/2018 p. 38/30 contains an article entitled “search without snooping”. The opening credits say: “Google’s search engine is successful because it delivers top results. But it also spys on its users comprehensively. Are there any viable alternatives?” The benchmark of an alternative search engine is then “data and privacy protection” rather than the search results (I will deal with this criterion separately).
In the german computer journal CHIP 4/2018 “Alternative Search Queries” it says: “A glance at the Google data protection statement peppered with subjunctives is enough to find out that Google not only stores search queries and IP addresses, but also personalises the data, uses it for advertising purposes and even shares it with third parties”.
More articles on the web
Search engines without collecting mania. These are the 5 best Google alternatives, Anonymous search engines: searches without snoopers or similar apply the same standard “privacy”.

So the question is: What does Google store and what does data protection mean?

(more…)

Google as a problem

Google has a market share of almost 95% in Germany. A monopoly position can be problematic in several ways:
– Quality of information <- >Advertising.
– Information bubble, if search results are displayed according to previous searches.
– Dominance of the advertising market and online market.
– Social and political aspect: Can political opinion be influenced or even controlled?
So the question arises:
– Can’t other search engines be used? How are their search results to be evaluated? What standards are applied?
– If the search results of the other search engines are not sufficiently suitable, does not an alternative have to be developed by public means?
– If the USA dominates the search engine market with Google and Bing and China with Baidu and Russia with Yandex develop search engines, is it not already necessary for this reason to develop a European search engine?
There are completely different aspects of the subject that we want to examine individually.