'Completely wrong,' Mitt Romney, and the Google dust-up

Google says the 'completely wrong' image results are 'natural' – not a deliberate jab at Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. 

|
Reuters
A boy holds a hand puppet of Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney during a campaign stop at the Shelby County Fairgrounds in Sidney, Ohio, on Oct. 10.

Political news is big on Google, but the search engine rarely becomes the focus of a political story.

As a slew of Twitterers and bloggers pointed out yesterday afternoon, the search term "completely wrong" brings up a slew of pictures (big and small) of presidential hopeful and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney. CNN has traced the origin of the whole mess to an interview with Sean Hannity of Fox News, wherein Romney attempted to distance himself from his infamous "47 percent" gaffe.

"Clearly in a campaign with hundreds if not thousands of speeches and question-and-answer sessions, now and then you're going to say something that doesn't come out right," Romney told Hannity, "In this case, I said something that's just completely wrong."

But now his explanation has turned into a veritable Internet meme – and not one that's likely to go away anytime soon. 

So is this an easter egg? Well, not exactly. An easter egg usually refers to a message hidden intentionally by developers. Google has scattered quite a few of those through its search rankings in recent years: There was the easter egg with the "loneliest number," the easter egg with the barrel roll – a nod to the Nintendo classic "Starfox" – and the deservedly-beloved "zerg rush" game, which was created in homage to "Starcraft."

By comparison, the "completely wrong" results appear to be a regular old byproduct of Google's search algorithm.

In a statement to ABC News, Google called the whole thing "natural" – in other words, not malicious or premeditated. Not that Fox News was quite ready to believe it. The network pointed out today that Google is a "left-leaning" company, and that "Google CEO Eric Schmidt has visited the White House 14 times since January 2009." 

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to 'Completely wrong,' Mitt Romney, and the Google dust-up
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Technology/Horizons/2012/1011/Completely-wrong-Mitt-Romney-and-the-Google-dust-up
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe