Metafilter geeks are divided about the implications of Googlewash – the takeover of a search phrase on Google by somebody other than the originator
The entertaining Register article linked from the piece explains the full context, but essentially a New York Times article described the global anti-war movement as a “second superpower” and the phrase spead like wildfire, even being used by the UN Secretary General. Subsequently, another writer took the phrase and used it in the context of a much more bland and meaningless article that exorted “Web activists” to join up to form a second superpower, but also (as the Register points out) to “co-operate with The World Bank”. However, because this was picked up and rebroadcast by popular weblogs run by Doc Searles and Dave Winer (whose knowledge of the internet is *significantly* greater than their knowledge of the world beyond the United States), the number of sites linking to the second, bland piece began to grow exponentially. Now, because of the way that the supposedly “democratic” search engine Google ranks search results, this meant that in a period of only 42 days the former article was entirely replaced in searches for “Second Superpower” by the latter – so much so, in fact that 27 of the top 30 results for the term link to it
As the Register writes, “although it took millions of people around the world to compel the Gray Lady to describe the anti-war movement as a “Second Superpower”, it took only a handful of webloggers to spin the alternative meaning to manufacture sufficient PageRank� to flood Google with Moore’s alternative, neutered definition.”Google’s ability to generate new jargon continues unabated: Googlism, Googlebomb … and now Googlewash
Is it potentially threatening to diversity and free speech, or just a side-effect of a clever search algorithm?