Google's 'experiment' hiding Australian news just shows its inordinate power

theguardian.com

10 points·throwaway888abc··6 comments

Commented in the post linking to the ABC article about it, but I'll post in this thread too, since it's being reported by news outlets somewhat inaccurately.

Searching for 'news' in google in Australia absolutely does not return results without the commercial news sites as most headlines may lead people to believe.

Directly linking to news _articles_ on those news sites may be hidden, but it's an important distinction that nobody appears to be making.

Screenshot of google search for 'news' https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/774775322973437974/79...

> Google says it is displaying older or less relevant content to 1% of users.

Chances are you are not in the 1% selected for this A/B test.

Just a nit: There are several, each of which affects 1%. If five there's a 95% chance that he's in none of them ;)

It's hard to complain about experiments like this when publishers want to get paid for search results that drive traffic to their sites.

Personally I'd welcome a Google Search filter to exclude news sites.

People have this outdated idea that Google will reliably search through the entire internet to give the result that matches their query best. This goes against that, and is why they complain.

> It is “experimenting” with the lone supply of fact-checked, accountable information Australians can access right now

What? NewsCorp? Literally nothing of value will be lost. Australians may come out of this better informed.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com