I popped over to Pam Geller’s site today and noticed an interesting post concerning Google search. She references this post at the next web:
When you search for the major religions of the world, the monotheistic faiths for example, Google serves up suggestions for the search “Christianity is” such as, “a lie,” or false.” Try it on a a number of faiths, and then Islam.
Notice any difference?
Google is systematically blocking, it seems, all search suggestions for Islam. Why? To remove the chance of an adherent of the faith from being offended by a perhaps severe search suggestion? Why not treat all search terms equally?
Given the complete lack of suggestions, not just terms that could be perceived as negative, it seems that Google is covering its, well, behind.
Take a look at the graphics, they are rather damning and cowardly. I tried the “is” combinations myself and got the same results as the screen shots. Remember Glenn’s oft repeated warning:
MY ADVICE TO CHRISTIANS, JEWS, HINDUS, ETC: Start blowing things up and beheading people. This will gain you enormous solicitude from the powers-that-be…
…No, I’m not serious about the advice. But they need to think about the incentive that’s being created here, or I fear that others will take the lesson. When you reward behavior, you tend to get more of it.
For the fun of it I tried the same thing with yahoo. The results for “Christianity is”, “Judaism is” are comparable with the Google results, but take a look at “Islam is”:

When you use google as your only search engine, you are behaving no differently than if you used only ABC, CBS and NBC as your only networks.
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