At the Chicago Tribune, Dave Wischnowsky asks, is Google sexist?
No, says the Internet giant -- despite some awfully quirky evidence pointing to the contrary -- we're just, well ... it's complicated.
But before we get to that -- the ending of this odd little story -- let's start at the beginning.
Which would have been last Thursday when I received an oddball e-mail from a Tribune reader in which he claimed that Google appears to discriminate against women when you use it to search for certain phrases and word combinations.
For example, the reader wrote, if you Google the phrase "she invents," the Web site spits out the suggestion: "Did you mean: he invents."
The same thing happens, he said, with many other two-word pairings such as "she owns," "she intelligent" and "she responsible."
Conversely, the reader asserted, you don't receive the suggestion "Did you mean: she invents" when you search for the phrase "he invents."
But the capper, according to the reader, was that if you Google "she" with many words stereotypically associated with women -- such as "cooks," "cleans," or "mops" -- the search engine does not offer up:
"Did you mean: he cooks" or "he cleans" or "he mops."
Needless to say, I was skeptical about the whole thing. The e-mail seemed to simply be one of those online "urban legends" that I've learned to be plenty leery about.
But then I tried things out for myself.
And it turned out, the reader was right.
Oddly enough, Google did seem to treat females and males differently when it came to many two-word combinations beginning with either "she" or "he."
Including even "she Google."
Curious about this fascinating little phenomenon, I did some online digging and discovered that several blogs had begun buzzing about the issue last week.
...As for myself, I wanted to know if Google knew about the phenomenon, and if there was an explanation for it.
So, I e-mailed a spokesperson for the company.
In a friendly response, a representative said Google was aware of the issue and offered up a not-so-simple explanation for it:
"Google develops its own spell-checking algorithms based on sophisticated machine learning methods, using cues from aggregated user input, Web documents, and many other sources," the spokesperson replied via e-mail.
"The algorithm provides a 'best-guess' alternative suggestion that we think might improve the search results, and is completely generated without human input. It can be thought of as a suggestion offer, rather than a definitive answer."
Now, whether Google's answer is a definitive one or not, I really can't say. My degree's in journalism, not computer science.
Read more here.
(Hat tip: Google Watch.)
