Is Beijing’s Tiananmen Square a sunny tourist attraction or the site of a lethal military crackdown? Your Google search result may vary depending on cultural differences and government preferences. (From 2021)
makes it easy to see how Google offers different responses to the same query on versions of its search engine offered in different parts of the world. The research project reveals how Google’s service can reflect or amplify cultural differences or government preferences—such as whether Beijing’s Tiananmen Square should be seen first as a sunny tourist attraction or the site of a lethal military crackdown on protesters.
Ochigame and Ye say the design reveals “information borders” created by the way Google’s search technology ranks web pages, presenting different slices of reality to people in different locations or using different languages. An experimental interface for Google Search found that it offered very different views of Beijing's Tiananmen Square to searchers from the UK , Singapore , and China.A Google spokesperson said the differences in results were not caused by censorship and that content about the Tiananmen Square massacre is available via Google Search in any language or locale setting.
Other information borders charted by the researchers don’t map straightforwardly onto national or language boundaries. Results for “how to combat climate change” tend to divide island nations and countries on continents.
Whatever the exact reason Google shows—or doesn’t show—particular results, they have a power too easily overlooked, says Search Atlas cocreator Ye. “People ask search engines things they would never ask a person, and the things they happen to see in Google’s results can change their lives,” Ye says. “It could be ‘How do I get an abortion?’ restaurants near you, or how you vote, or get a vaccine.”
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