I often hear rumors and theories that Google has coded into its search ranking algorithm its political bias. A lot of the debate going around now before US election time is if Google is doing that. Well, a 13+ year search engineer at Google named Ryan Moulton said if he ever saw evidence of this, he would resign.
He even added that he personally "aware of everything that controls how web pages are ranked." "If I ever encountered a system that was designed to alter the results for political reasons, I would resign," he wrote on a Hacker News thread.
The thread is related to a NY Times story named Tulsi Gabbard, Democratic Presidential Candidate, Sues Google for $50 Million. Representative Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) filed a federal lawsuit alleging that Google infringed on her free speech when it paused her campaign's advertising account for six hours after the Democratic presidential debate on June 28.
Now Ryan doesn't work on ads but he does work on core search. When someone in the thread wrote "How is that hard to believe? We know for a fact Google does political censorship." Ryan from Google responded saying:
I work at Google on ranking algorithms for Search. I'm aware of everything that controls how web pages are ranked. If I ever encountered a system that was designed to alter the results for political reasons, I would resign.
If you catch my Monday vlog with Rand part, which is coming up this coming Monday, the 29th, you will hear some of our conversation around this topic. It is really nice to see a Googler who has been at the company for this long say something like this. Of course, not everyone would believe him - but hey.
He even said he is "aware of everything that controls how web pages are ranked" - pretty cool.
Forum discussion at Hacker News.
