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, Mr. Trump's photo 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 outside, then compares the keyword with the one it just entered. Our ranking is based on 200 criteria, such as relevance, freshness, popularity, how other people use it, etc., and ultimately delivers the most suitable results," Pichai said. "This process is done entirely by algorithms 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 the search algorithm, pushing 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.
Pichai also encountered another humorous situation during the hearing, when his company was mistaken for the iPhone manufacturer. "I have a 7-year-old granddaughter who was playing a game on her iPhone. Then on the screen, there was a picture of her grandfather, which was me. I want to ask, how did that picture appear on a child's iPhone?" Steve King, a representative of the House Judiciary Committee, asked.
Pichai responded that the iPhone was made by another company. King then defended himself 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 about 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 difficulties for the head of Google.
