This is an actually interesting topic (i.e., that Google personalizes search) that is spun in a political context to generate pageviews. In the spin, the interesting element is actually lost, because after introducing the topic, the journalist digs no deeper and gives the audience no greater insight than what they might derive from a better-written headline.<p>The fact that personalized search applies to political topics is unsurprising and probably reflects that Google is data-driven. The fact that Romney doesn't trigger the same personalization as Obama probably reflects that, until recently, his name was virtually never searched for (relatively).[1]<p>By introducing Mr. Weinberg, the author gives us hope that we will learn something about the nature of personalized search and its implications, but I think that HNers would be much more satisfied to re-read his blog entries on the topic.[2]<p>[1] = <a href="http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=obama%2C%20romney&geo=US&cmpt=q" rel="nofollow">http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=obama%2C%20romney&...</a><p>[2] = <a href="http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2012/08/how-do-you-completely-de-personalize-google-results.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2012/08/how-do-you-compl...</a>
I don't know why they bother putting 'Mystery' in the headline.<p><a href="http://www.google.ca/trends/explore#q=obama,%20romney" rel="nofollow">http://www.google.ca/trends/explore#q=obama,%20romney</a><p>Surprise, the incumbent president is far more popular than the challenger, in terms of historic searches. There's no mystery, this is somewhere between a fluff political piece and an advertisement for Google's new search tech.<p>Come on WSJ, you can do better.<p>edit: A bigger mystery; does anyone know why these searches are more popular in Africa than the United States? The top five countries for Obama searches are:<p>1) Burundi
2) Guinea
3) Rwanda
4) Sierra Leone
5) United States<p>Meanwhile, Romney is pretty much only relevant in the US.
Alternate Headline: DuckDuckGo chief, trying to rustle up more users from Google personalization-fear-baiting, spoon feeds article to WSJ.<p>What'd I miss?
WSJ is really turning into Murdoch's mouthpiece. The breaking news is that at standing president of 4 years has different search results than his opponent?
Here's how to easily de-personalize your google experience<p>1. Disable cookies for encrypted.google.com<p>2. Set the default search engine to: <a href="https://encrypted.google.com/search?&q=%s" rel="nofollow">https://encrypted.google.com/search?&q=%s</a><p>Edit: Sorry, de-personalize, not anonymize.
This TED talk does a good job explaining the concepts of what is happening in this article.<p><a href="http://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bubbles.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bu...</a>
"...In the hands of a human, decisions like these might be viewed as biased. For a Google algorithm, they are simply a matter of numbers..."<p>I hate to continue the political thread, but "biased" doesn't quite cut it. Algorithms don't automatically make everything magic. There is a structural issue that just saying "it's the algorithm" doesn't explain or address.<p>No doubt the data leans that way because Obama has been a searchable term for longer. This just leads to the natural question: should incumbents be given extra chances at a target audience simply because they've generated a lot more content? I don't think so, but I find myself arguing with a mathematical formula. The nature of the social value of making democratic decisions is different from the nature of the personal value of targeting results.<p>Weird.
> In the hands of a human, decisions like these might be viewed as biased. For a Google algorithm, they are simply a matter of numbers.<p>This is pure nonsense. Algorithms are written by humans and are just as biased as their creators.