Search Atlas shows how Google results differ around the world

How does a search engine like Google quantify, analyze and classify information? What factors does it take into account and how are they weighted? The algorithms that handle queries may be opaque, but the end results are clearly visible.

This is the idea behind Search the Atlas, a new tool developed by academics that aims to show how Google would display search results if a query was entered in different parts of the world. It is an experimental interface for Google search that returns three, rather than one, columns of results selected from more than 100 geographically located versions of the search engine around the world. So, for example, a search of Tiananmen Square may prioritize the infamous 1989 massacre of protesters or directions for tourists; in the United States, some results may be suppressed due to Digital Millennium Copyright Act complaints; or in France and Germany, some denial sites may be blocked results.

Wired reports that the creators of Search Atlas first presented their results at the Designing Interactive Systems conference in June and that it remains in private beta, but they released a paper and other preview material on the project website. The tool is already giving interesting results. For example, using Search Atlas to search for images of “God” brings up Christian images in the United States and Europe, while in Asia Buddha images have been found and in the Persian Gulf and in Europe. North Africa, an Arabic script.

In the UK and Singapore, a search of Tiananmen Square revealed images related to the massacre, while a search of China (where Google has been blocked since 2010) revealed “recent and sunny images of the square, dotted with tourists ”. according to Wired. The results of “How to tackle climate change” focused on policy solutions in Germany, while island countries like Mauritius and the Philippines appeared to receive results highlighting the immediate and severe nature of the threat, such as sea level rise that threatens to disproportionately affect them much sooner.

Likewise, Wired wrote that queries about the war in Ethiopia’s Tigray region taking place inside the country revealed “Facebook pages and blogs that criticized Western diplomatic pressure to defuse the conflict, suggesting that the United States and others were trying to weaken Ethiopia “, Kenya or the United States” more explanatory media coverage from sources such as the BBC and the New York Times “.

Ph.D. science, technology and society from MIT Rodrigo Ochigame, student and creator of Search Atlas, told Wired that the project aims to dispel the lingering idea that search engines like Google are neutral arbiter of information: “Any attempt to quantify relevance necessarily encodes moral and political priorities ”.

The co-creator of the project Katherine Ye, PhD student in computer science. a student at Carnegie Mellon University and a researcher at the nonprofit Center for Arts, Design, and Social Research, told Wired that “People ask search engines things they would never ask of anyone, and things they see in Google results can change their lives. It could be “How do I get an abortion?” restaurants near you, or how you vote, or get vaccinated.

For example, You tweeted that Google’s results for “the annexation of Crimea” showed results in Russia framed around the impact on the Russian Federation, in Ukraine framed around “the occupation” and in the Netherlands framed around the European Union sanctions against Russia.

These disparate results are not necessarily the result of an intention to remove information, but of factors such as Google trying to localize its results to be of more interest to people in specific geographies, business interest, local laws and what Ochigame and Ye told Wired are “information frontiers” that create “partial perspectives”. These supposedly apolitical adjustments nonetheless inevitably spill over into policy. While the difference in results for Tiananmen Square appears to reflect the Chinese government’s desire to cover up the incident, a Google spokesperson told Wired that the search engine displays the tourist images when it infers an intention to travel. The differences in searches for “God,” the site spokesperson told the site, were due to how the term is translated into different languages.

The end result is a partial slice of reality based on Google’s assumptions about the world and influenced by a desire to maximize revenue, the researchers say.

“Same the earlier studies, based at anecdotal remarks, already suggested that search engines systematically remove certain sites in favor of others in align with financial interests, ”the researchers wrote in the paper. “After recent studies to have argued this commercial research motors deploy algorithms this to reinforce existing social structures, in particular racist and sexist patterns of exposure, invisibility and marginalization. Thus, it is vital to expose the partial perspective to the search engines.