Google questioned because Trump's photo appears when typing 'idiot'
During a hearing with the US House Judiciary Committee, Google CEO was asked many questions related to how the search engine works.
On December 11, CEO Sundar Pichai had to testify on the topic "Transparency and Accountability: Google's Audit, Data Collection, Use and Filtering".
Among them, the congressmen mentioned that in August, the press reported that a photo of US President Donald Trump was associated with the keyword "idiot" on Google. "Right now, if you type the word 'idiot' into Google, a photo of Mr. Trump still appears. I just did it. How does that happen?", Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren wondered if Google interfered with search results.
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Google image search results for the keyword "idiot". |
"Whenever a user types in a keyword, Google queries billions of websites in its database and externally, then compares the keyword with the search term itself. Our ranking is based on 200 factors, such as relevance, freshness, popularity, how other people use it, etc., and ultimately delivers the most relevant results," Pichai explained. "This process is entirely algorithmic, and we do not manually intervene in any specific search results."
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Mr. Pichai at the hearing. Photo:CNet |
Previously, Google was said to have interfered with its search algorithm to push the ranking of the US president's portrait to the top with the aim of protesting Mr. Trump's policies on issues related to illegal immigrants and the LGBT community.
Also at the hearing, Pichai encountered another humorous situation, such as his company being mistaken for the iPhone manufacturer. "I have a 7-year-old granddaughter, playing a game on the iPhone. Then on the screen there is a picture of her grandfather, which is me. I want to ask, how did that picture appear on a child's iPhone?" Steve King, a representative of the House Judiciary Committee, questioned.
Pichai responded that the iPhone was made by another company. King then apologized by saying that "the brand of the phone doesn't matter." According toVerge, maybe this congressman is referring to the issue of false notification but not clearly expressing the meaning.
In addition, Google CEO was also questioned regarding Internet monopoly, Google+ social network, user location tracking, plans to build a separate search engine for China... However, most of the questions did not pose any difficulty to the head of Google.
