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Home Front: Politix
Googling for the word "failure"
2005-08-19
Fortune and Businessweek are leftist business magazines that seem to focus more on the need to expand the welfare state than business itself. Check out this snarky remark by one of its writers:
Speaking of Google, on the advice of a friend, I tried Googling the word "failure." Interesting results...
Note that Google has chosen to put the President's biography at whitehouse.gov as the number one listing under the word failure, even though the word appears nowhere on the page. This is the same Google that chose to help the Chinese government protect its citizens from search terms like "freedom" and "democracy". My advice is for conservatives to stop using Google. Also avoid MSN and Yahoo, both of which have the same bias. Askjeeves.com seems refreshingly devoid of leftist spin, so consider using it in place of the other search engines.
Posted by:Zhang Fei

#10  #6. Bobby: If you Google miserable failure and do NOT hit the "feeling lucky" button, our friend Mr. Moore comes up second. Fat boy was #3 when I Googled "failure" , but when I clicked on
www.michaelmoore.com/ George W.'s bio came up. So the unwashed one's IT team deflected it back to the whitehouse.gov.
Posted by: GK   2005-08-19 18:16  

#9  What is more telling is that after 2 years Google who's motto is "don't be evil" has not fixed it. If you look a Google news the sources are 100% liberal MSM. As with all search engines your trust level needs to be tempered by the realities of human foibles.
Posted by: Sock Puppet 0’ Doom   2005-08-19 18:01  

#8  Thanks, guys. I had heard of the term google-bombing before, but this is the first time I've read a detailed explanation.
Posted by: Zhang Fei   2005-08-19 14:37  

#7  Currently, number 2 for failure is Jimmy Carter's bio, also at whitehouse.gov.

Posted by: Angie Schultz   2005-08-19 14:27  

#6  tu 3031 is correct. But some good folks have been at work, too. If you Google miserable failure and do NOT hit the "feeling lucky" button, our friend Mr. Moore comes up second.

Google assigns significance to the number of times something is linked to something else. Some lefty who understood how Google worked developed the Google Bomb. Since "miserable failure" is such an odd search tern, it only took a few people a few links to get it to work.
Posted by: Bobby   2005-08-19 12:28  

#5  I heard of this a long time ago. It's been around for almost 2 years according to Snopes.

How did this come about, especially since the phrase "miserable failure" appears nowhere in the President's biography? It was the result of a "Google bombing" project organized by George Johnston back at the end of October 2003, in which he used his blog to urge others to include links connecting the phrase "miserable failure" (a term used prominently by Democratic hopeful Dick Gephardt) with the President's biography in their own web sites and blogs:
Let's get everyone to link to http://www.whitehouse.gov/president/gwbbio.html with the words "Miserable Failure." Our goal is to make Shrubya the top google pick.
It's fun, it's easy just Miserable Failure in your favorite web page will look like Miserable Failure
According to Mr. Johnston's progress report, by the last week of November 2003 the Bush biography was the #2 result on Google for "miserable failure," and — after more and more netizens implemented the same link on their sites and urged others to do the same — it reached the top spot soon afterward. (A #1 ranking at Google brings the added bonus of returning the targeted site when users select the search engine's "I'm Feeling Lucky" button.)


Maybe I could be a columnist for Forbes or Businessweek?
Posted by: tu3031   2005-08-19 12:21  

#4  It was a google bomb by leftist... nothing to do with google the company...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_bomb
Posted by: Damn_Proud_American   2005-08-19 12:03  

#3  wouldnt whitehouse.gov have lots of references to how NoChildLeftBehind is countering the failure of public schools?
Posted by: liberalhawk   2005-08-19 11:38  

#2  Leftists dominate the broadcast and print media, and now they're dominating internet search engines, as well. It makes a lot of sense. Internet companies are media companies, too. Think about the type of people who work for media companies...
Posted by: Zhang Fei   2005-08-19 11:32  

#1  That's interesting. The word isn't even in the meta tag list.
Posted by: Bomb-a-rama   2005-08-19 11:08  

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