Category Archives: Notable Websites

A researcher at Microsoft, danah boyd (yes, she intentionally spells her first and last name all in lower case letter), recently wrote on her blog about how a clever feature that Google introduced a while ago can lead casual searchers to make erroneous assumptions. At issue is the auto-complete feature in the Google search box, which starts to suggest terms to complete your search query as you are typing it in. Those suggestions can be quite helpful as you try to think through just what it is you are trying to search for and how to spell your search words. But boyd argues that the naive searcher might be led to believe that the phrases that Google’s auto-complete suggests to you are somehow connected to statements actually found on websites.

Here is a scenario that boyd offers as an example of what can happen:

You’re a 16-year-old Muslim kid in America. Say your name is Mohammad Abdullah. Your schoolmates are convinced that you’re a terrorist. They keep typing in Google queries likes “is Mohammad Abdullah a terrorist?” and “Mohammad Abdullah al Qaeda.” Google’s search engine learns. All of a sudden, auto-complete starts suggesting terms like “Al Qaeda” as the next term in relation to your name. You know that colleges are looking up your name and you’re afraid of the impression that they might get based on that auto-complete. You are already getting hostile comments in your hometown, a decidedly anti-Muslim environment. You know that you have nothing to do with Al Qaeda, but Google gives the impression that you do. And people are drawing that conclusion. You write to Google but nothing comes of it. What do you do?

What do you think? Do you think people might really jump to unreasonable conclusions based on what suggestions auto-complete offers?

boyd, danah. “Guilt Through Algorithmic Association.” apophenia, 12 Sep. 2011. Web. 13 Sep. 2011.