Is Google rigged? An investigation.
Welcome to our new weekly wrap-up video where we will cover the biggest stories in tech and business over the past week and add our unique perspective into the mix. We love hearing from you so definitely feel free to leave a comment or tweet us with your thoughts as well.
Weekly Wrap-up Video
IS GOOGLE RIGGED?
The Trump administration on Tuesday said it would explore regulating Google because Trump believes that Google manipulates its search results to prominently display negative stories about him and other Republicans.
Trump sent a tweet which claimed that search results for “Trump News” were “RIGGED for me & others, so that almost all stories & news is BAD,” apparently responding to a report from Fox News. Then, his top economic advisor, Larry Kudlow, said the White House is now “taking a look” at whether, and how, Google should be regulated by the government.
In the United States, regulating search results could violate the First Amendment, lawmakers from both parties, free-speech advocates and tech experts said.
Later on in the day, Trump went on to say, “Google and Twitter and Facebook, they’re really treading on very, very troubled territory. And they have to be careful,” the president said later Tuesday. “It’s not fair to large portions of the population.”
These are ridiculous allegations by Trump and I’ll show you why.
As I go through in the video, check out these searches I conducted on Google minutes apart:
As you can see the results are pretty evenly distributed. Plus, Trump’s tweets (his preferred method of speaking to the American public) are front and center in both sets of results. So where exactly is the problem?
So now I’ll throw this to you: should Google search results be regulated?
CALIFORNIA FIRE PROVES WHY WE NEED NET NEUTRALITY
FCC Chairman Ajit Pai and his staff are fond of taking to Twitter to assert that, in the just over two months since the repeal of the FCC’s 2015 network neutrality rules took effect, the “Internet remains free and open” — and that opponents’ concerns that unconstrained broadband providers will act in a way that harms consumers and competition are overblown.
A recent lawsuit challenging the repeal of net neutrality explains that Verizon had severely throttled the Santa Clara County Central Fire Protection District’s so-called “unlimited” broadband data service during the Mendocino Complex Fire, the largest in California state history. The FPD has attempted to use the broadband service to provide crisis response and essential emergency services, but it had been slowed to dial-up speeds.
DIAL-UP SPEEDS.
After several communications between the FPD and Verizon, in which, the FPD had to beg Verizon to stop throttling their internet for the public good—nothing happened. It wasn’t until the FPD agreed to pay Verizon more than double cost of their previous service that they stopped throttling their internet speeds.
In the words of Oscar Martinez from The Office: UN-BE-LIVE-ABLE
If Net Neutrality hadn’t been repealed this never would have happened. Net neutrality is super important to a healthy internet.
I want to hear your thoughts: should we bring back net neutrality?