Considering the Google is possibly the most commonly used search engine on the internet today, the idea of Google bombing is decidedly disturbing. This concept was brought the public eye a few years ago, when someone Google bombed George W. Bush. At the time, whenever a Google user typed in “total failure,” the first result that they received would by the official presidential website.
Google bombing has been used by many groups and organizations as a way of manipulating the search results that uses receive from a Google search. It is a simple matter of manipulating the information that is input into Google’s PageRank algorithm, which Google then uses to determine what pages to output, and in what order. The George W. Bush prank is an amusing stunt, but what larger implications could this technology hold of the dissemination of information?
Thanks to Google bombing, individual people, equipped with nothing more than an internet connection and a whole lot of free time, can effectively control the information that we, the people, receive. What does it mean for our freedom of speech if this speech can effectively be masked by Google bombing? For that matter, what is the effectiveness of a search engine that operates solely on the popularity of a given website? From this perspective, it seems that Google does not exhibit necessarily exhibit the necessary characteristics of net neutrality. While all sites are given even ground from which to distribute their information, this level ground has the ability to be strategically manipulated in ways that may seem equitable. True, this analysis does stretch the definition of net neutrality, and there are probably no legal qualms related to the practice of Google bombing, but it certainly does raise some interesting questions regarding the fairness of one of the most prominent methods of internet media dissemination.