A very interesting debate on Dave Farber’s IP list dissects the difference in news headlines about Google’s recent hiring of Kai-Fu Lee and Microsoft’s subsequent lawsuit. Jason Lee Miller of Webpronews posted a link to an inflammatory story claiming bias:
When the search terms “Dr. Lee court documents Google Microsoft” were
entered into Google, the majority of results were emblazoned with the
phrase “lawsuit is a charade” in large comforting letters, repeated
again again again.
That’s interesting, I thought. I wonder what MSN returns?
As I suspected, there was one link, in the middle, with the “charade”
reference. The rest were to the tune of “Microsoft wins round against
Google,” and “Ex-Microsoft Exec Barred From Google Job.”Could this be a coincidence? Or is this brilliant PR algorithmic manipulation?
Richard Wiggins debunks the story using a common sense analysis of the different methodology of the two search engines. (I have to say that while Wiggins makes a good case that Google is not manipulating the results, his argument that Microsoft is not doing so boils down to “why ascribe to malice what can more easily be ascribed to ineptitude.” I’d love to see someone make a stronger argument for the unbiased nature of Microsoft’s results.)