No Need to Google for Bias?

From different blogs come interesting looks at how well Google, my favorite internet search engine, lives up to its founders' claim to be on a mission to provide unbiased results. To quote Sergey Brin, who is Jewish, on why an anti-Semitic site is not blocked when the word "Jew" is searched:

In an interview with Reuters, Google founder Sergey Brin said 'I certainly am very offended by the site, but the objectivity of our rankings is one of our very important principles.' Brin, who is Jewish himself, stated 'We don't let our personal views - religious, political, ethical or otherwise - affect our results.'

Via Klados, I learned of an interesting search result on a beta version of Google Maps. The search phrase "liar near Washington D.C." turns up President Bush along with a few other odd results. It sounds like an Easter Egg to me.

But this is in beta testing. (And more than a short time after this post, all links to map searches may change.) Interestingly, other search terms on the highest-level map (most of North America) show Osama bin Laden to be somewhere near the border between Kansas and Oklahoma. Somebody, quick! Alert main stream media! They need something to crow about after Eason-Gate! (If MSM takes Hugh Hewitt's advice and starts reading the blogs, I'll be all over the papers tomorrow! Fame will arrive at long last for yours truly! We can then blog about fact-checking and save MSM once and for all.)

Adolf Hitler (dead) doesn't show up. Check. No Josef Mengele. Check. Oddly enough, Saddam Hussein is somewhere near bin Laden! Some conspiracy theorist will like that one! Kos? Kos?

But what would Malkin have to say? One wonders. Her blog and LGF (both blogrolled) are excluded from Google News.

Something's definitely screwy. In my letter, Google News said "we do not include sites that do not have a formal editorial review process." Is the presumption that group blogs have a formal editorial review process because they are run by more than one person, but that an individual blog is incapable of satisfactory self-editing? If an individual blog does investigative reporting or publishes original documents, as LGF has done and as this blog occasionally does, is the "formal editorial review process" requirement waived?

Why is Democratic Underground a Google News source, but not LGF? Why is a blog that recycles gossip and drinking games a Google News source, but not this blog?

Interesting. And, to add insult to injury, Little Green Footballs shows up in North America, but Michelle Malkin does not! (Although in the latter case, you inexplicably get a zoom of Dearing, Kansas.) Well, it looks like Google Maps won't be ready for prime-time anywhere in the near future.

Maybe someone should ask Sergey Brin why "Jew Watch" merits search hits and LGF (run by a Jew, I think) does not. In truth, they both do.

-- CAV

Updates

2-15-05: See this post for information on political donations by Google employees.