It's subjective ...

 

Illustration: Hiroshi Watanabe

We view the world in subjective terms as every human's different as are governments and cultures, something readily seen in differing Google's search engine results generated from various parts of the world depicted by Search Atlas, a powerful new tool showing how subjectivity skews the search in question.

GOOGLE’S CLAIM TO “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful” has earned it an aura of objectivity. Its dominance in search, and the disappearance of most competitors, make its lists of links appear still more canonical. An experimental new interface for Google Search aims to remove that mantle of neutrality.

Search Atlas makes it easy to see how Google offers different responses to the same query on versions of its search engine offered in different parts of the world. The research project reveals how Google’s service can reflect or amplify cultural differences or government preferences—such as whether Beijing’s Tiananmen Square should be seen first as a sunny tourist attraction or the site of a lethal military crackdown on protesters.

An experimental interface for Google Search found that it offered very different views of Beijing's Tiananmen Square to searchers from the UK (left), Singapore (center), and China. Courtesy of Search Atlas

Click the Search Atlas PDF to see why SA's important.