----------------------- Message requiring your approval ---------------------- From: "Dr. Donald J. Weinshank" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: [ha-Safran]: GOOGLE and anti-Semitism
Stop the nonsense: GOOGLE is not ant-Semitic and this petition is actually helping the anti-Semites.
Friends:
I have received dozens of E-mail in the last few days. These E-mails make two points.
1. The most popular search for "Jew" on GOOGLE turns up an anti-Semitic site. 2. We should petition GOOGLE to suppress this site.
Both of these statements contain inherent falsehoods.
Please read the following long message very carefully. Please use it to reply to any further messages on this subject that you receive. Let me take this point-by-point.
1. The most popular search for "Jew" on GOOGLE turns up an anti-Semitic site.
The search engine is neither philo-Semitic nor anti-Semitic. It is an algorithm which reports the links to sites, no more, no less.
Forgive my bluntness, but complaining about the GOOGLE search algorithm makes as much sense as saying that God is unfair because people fall off ladders due to gravity. We will just look like fools.
Google itself tells you:
http://www.google.com/terms_of_service.html
Content Linked to by Google
The sites displayed as search results or linked to by Google Services are developed by people over whom Google exercises no control. The search results that appear from Google's indices are indexed by Google's automated machinery and computers, and Google cannot and does not screen the sites before including them in the indices from which such automated search results are gathered. A search using Google Services may produce search results and links to sites that some people find objectionable, inappropriate, or offensive. We cannot guarantee that a Google search will not locate unintended or objectionable content ...
Also see http://www.google.com/technology/index.html
PageRank Explained
PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important."
Important, high-quality sites receive a higher PageRank, which Google remembers each time it conducts a search. Of course, important pages mean nothing to you if they don't match your query. So, Google combines PageRank with sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to your search. Google goes far beyond the number of times a term appears on a page and examines all aspects of the page's content (and the content of the pages linking to it) to determine if it's a good match for your query.
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The bottom line is that algorithms such as the GOOGLE one simply count links. There is no person sitting somewhere hand-editing the links to advance any political agenda.
©2004 Google - Searching 4,285,199,774 web pages as of 4/13/04 at 1431 EST Yup. That is more than four BILLION pages. Claiming that GOOGLE's algorithm is anti-Semitism makes us look like technological ignoramuses.
The really ironic thing is that one of the founders, Larry Page, is the son of my late colleague Karl Page. I spoke at Karl's funeral. The very thought of being anti-any-group would have been an anathema to Karl and remains so to his family.
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2. We should petition GOOGLE to suppress this site.
If we actually succeed in pressuring Google to override its own algorithm to suppress sites not to our liking, we will live to regret it. Others can play that game equally well, and there are many more of "them" than of "us."
Next, do not go to any site which asks for petitions to oppose an anti-Semitic site. This has the counter-intuitive effect of making those anti-Semitic site sites more important in the GOOGLE ranking.
SB ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) just posted a message on HaSafran, the listserv of the Association of Jewish Librarians. Commenting on an earlier posting by AR ([EMAIL PROTECTED]), SB correctly observes:
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Ironically, many of the websites (including the "Remove Jew Watch" petition site which are trying to push down the ranking for "Jew Watch" are probably having the reverse effect. You see, Google will count the number of links to a website, as well as the number of times a particular phrase (in or near the hyperlink phrase) is used at the website that it's "spidering."<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
So, for example, if 100 websites added the following
Google has ranked the anti-Semitic website Jew Watch <http://www.jewwatch.com> #1 when searching with just the word JEW. We should all sign a petition asking Google to do something about it.
to their websites, Google would calculate that 100 more websites are associating "Jew" with the website http://www.jewwatch.com. ****
Aside from that, not only do I agree with Andrea that we must carefully choose our battles; we also have to consider what a Google ranking really means.
By making Jew Watch the #1 ranking for "Jew," Google is saying that Jew Watch is the most popular website that has the term "Jew" in it. However Google calculates "popularity," it is a fact that Jew Watch is the most popular "Jew" site at the moment.
Think of Google as a "reference librarian" for the Internet, whose sole reference tool is the Internet. If asked the question, "What is the most popular / most referenced / most linked website on the Internet that contains the word "Jew" in it, the answer would be (at the moment) Jew Watch. Not the AJL, not the JDL, not the American Jewish Historical Society.
A reference librarian might not like the answer s/he is providing, but won't change the answer just to make him/herself or the patron feel better. We don't change answers. We teach critical evaluation of research and how to effectively search for all of the facts, using a variety of resources.
I don't know much about algorithms, but I don't think it would be so easy to alter the algorithm just to change the ranking for one site. To use a crude analogy, suppose a Christian fundamentalist started a lobbying campaign to reprogram new calculators so that, e.g. the calculation "665+1" no longer equals 666 and "70-1" no longer equals 69. Though technically it is possible to program a calculator that way, no one would ever trust a calculator that gives the result "68" for 70-1. I imagine the Google programmers are similarly puzzled as to how to reprogram the Google site's computers so that it excludes "Jew Watch" without compromising the integrity of the algorithms and without making Google lose its reputation.
...snip...
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And, oh yes, it will not do any good to petition GOOGLE.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/13/technology/13google.html?ex=1082858656&ei=1&en=437dbd4974c1d110
Google Says It Doesn't Plan to Change Search Results
By LAURIE J. FLYNN
Published: April 13, 2004
SAN FRANCISCO, April 12 - Google Inc., the leading Internet search engine, said Monday that it had no plans to alter its search results despite complaints that the first listing on a search for the word "Jew" directs people to an anti-Semitic Web site.
...snip...
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Please stop this piece of nonsense immediately. It makes us look ignorant and will come back to haunt us.
Review the two points above and use this message to reply to anybody who sends you further nonsense on this subject.
_________________________________________________ Dr. Don Weinshank Professor Emeritus Comp. Sci. & Eng. 1520 Sherwood Ave., East Lansing MI 48823-1885 Ph. 517.337.1545 FAX 517.337.2539 http://www.cse.msu.edu/~weinshan
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