Wednesday, July 23, 2014

Google Screwball

Who says the Republican Party always protects large corporations that abuse the little, little man? Meet the GOP's Elizabeth Warren:
Republican Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, a frequent foe of Google, is demanding to know why the giant Internet company was fumbling the search results for Dinesh D'Souza's movie America for nearly three weeks.
Rohrabacher tellsThe Hollywood Reporter that he's so disturbed by Google's behavior he intends on discussing it Wednesday during the House Republican Conference, which is the party caucus for Republicans in the House of Representatives.
Shortly after the movie opened wide on July 2, the filmmakers complained to Google that Internet users looking for showtimes and locations were sometimes misdirected to the wrong movie. On other occasions, an image of the film's poster was incorrect or a description of the movie was wrong.
"This doesn't deserve to be ignored. We need to verify the statistics in some way, and I will be suggesting the appropriate committee or subcommittee have some kind of hearing on this," Rohrbacher said. "We know there were significant incidences, and that would suggest there was intent behind Google's nonperformance."
 .... 
 "I spoke to several people and some said they had problems with the search and some said they didn't. If there was an intent to confuse the public about this movie because of its ideological content, then we're going to find out about it," Rohrabacher said. "This charge has captured the attention of those of us who see that Google has acted arrogantly in a number of areas."
... 
"I'm not threatening to shut them down, but shining a spotlight on a corporation that is acting in an abusive way can have as great an impact as legislation or regulation," Rohrabacher said. "If Google isn't informing the public about movies they disagree with, then that needs to be exposed."
That ought to be worth a few straw donations for Dana.

Let's hope that Dana will be similiarly motivated to hold hearings on assaults in federal prison come September.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Triumph of the SEO Will.

parsec

Montag said...

Ah, well, in the dictionary, under the definition of "clown," there's a photo of Rohrabacher.

Some people had some trouble finding some listings for some fucking movie, and he wants Congressional hearings?

Doesn't this guy understand just how fucking stupid his constituents are? (After all, they've returned him to office time and again.)

How many of those searches were for "Dish Dooza movie," or "AmericaFuckYeah movie," or "American Movie," or "that John Philip D'Sousa thing?"

Jaysus, these are people who think Obama was simultaneously born in Kenya, Indonesia and North Korea. Even Rohrabacher, dumb as he is, should know what is the problem here.

Jules said...

After this happens, Roarbladder will launch an investigation into a Coke machine that shortchanged him by a nickle.

ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© said...

The company buckled after America producers wrote a letter asking why their movie was not showing up swiftly in searches for the seven-letter word. It was being outpaced, for a while, by Captain America: The Winter Soldier, a movie with an anti-surveillance theme that has grossed almost $250,000,000 more than D'Souza's widely panned documentary.
...
In other words, the federal government should investigate a private company to determine whether it ever biased search results against a privately distributed movie, even after the results were rejiggered so successfully that when you now type in America, you are immediately informed of which nearby empty theater is playing the D'Souza movie.

- The guy Hiatt fired and replaced with Jenghazi Rubin
~

Anonymous said...

He's from Huntington Beach, surf nazi Capitol of SoCal. He once made the mistake of appearing on camera sporting a board (prop) and a revealing wet suit that unfortunately revealed that he had nothing to reveal. The source of his frequent rage doctor? He's the type of egomaniac who flips out at spell-check