Great post as always, but I'm not even humoring what Veritas is trying to do here.
It's especially rich coming from that organization which has previously been caught trying to stage fake accusers of Roy Moore in order to create false narratives.
No one should be taking these people and their "expose" videos seriously.
They simply know nothing about politics and want private companies regulated. This makes them clueless leftists and that's all I'm pointing out to them.
You're giving them way too much credit by engaging in this level of discourse, not that I don't love reading it.

He said that Google search returns nothing on the Clinton email scandal. That isn't true. Out of over 200,000 results, even what is returned at the top of the first page is critical of her actions.

The criticism is not as detailed as Mark Levin's analysis, but you can find that, too. Search for 'clinton email mark levin' and it appears right after the Media Matters attack on Levin at the top, which the Google algorithm apparently rates as more important. Levin is there at the top but you still have to search through Levin's website to find something on his analysis of Clinton email scandal in particular.

A bing search returns more explicit results on Levin's analysis, but it's also harder that way to find the leftist response to Levin, such as Media Matter's. The contrast illustrates the bias -- google isn't ranking details on Mark Levin's analysis as high as Media Matters -- but it isn't true that Google does not return anything about 'clinton email'.

Most top news search returns are higher ranked with leftist media because the establishment media is leftist. It is what most people want to see because the whole culture is leftist, which in turn is why Google is leftist. They don't know what their own "bias" is. "Center and center-left" now means much farther to the left, but they think it's just the way things are, not a "bias". Almost no one is challenging the establishment intellectuals who are causing this. Screaming about Google "bias" deliberately "rigging" search engines is not helping.

They don't know the alternate -- other than conservative self-parodies mixed with dogma, hysterical yelling (like Levin's undermining his own analysis), and a conspiracy mentality, understandably not taken seriously. Conservatives can be their own worst enemy, drowning out more serious analysis against the left and the nature of the cultural trends.

But despite the bias, ironically you can find the recent devastating Robert Epstein Senate testimony technical analysis against Google (which Coppola, the engineer interviewed by Veritas, briefly referred to but did not discuss).

Search for 'Robert Epstein Congressional testimony' and returned at the top of the results you see links for the video of the testimony and links to download his written comments: "Why Google Poses a Serious Threat to Democracy and How to End That Threat", Testimony by Robert Epstein https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/...

But you do have to know what to search for to find it. Searching on 'google bias' turns up criticism of google, including law suits, but not the details you may want.

They own their servers and software and they sell ads. Their company is private property. They did not steal access to the internet. There is no excuse to use "bias" for government control.

An entirely different matter from the prevailing political bias, which is everywhere, is the mass surveillance. There are still no laws defining and protecting personal information as private property to stop it. It would be interesting to see what would happen to their business if there were.

Google and others fought the new European GDPR privacy law and failed to stop it, and are lobbying to minimize the newer California law, but seem to be legally functioning despite that. But "privacy" laws are not being formulated in terms of personal property rights.

Is Australia doing anything along these lines? It has recently passed bad laws undermining security, which is the wrong direction.

Snide? I never said that. Fine, whatever.

Please explain the logic of why individuals must be responsible for their own choices.

Government physical force and economic power are opposites...in a well-managed free state, with well-defined rights, limits and a high degree of freedom. Government power and economic power in Russia are completely intertwined, as they are many places.

Why is it a crime to pay government officials to rewrite their laws and give control to the payer? There is no such law in many countries. You call it illegal. It may be immoral, maybe. But it is not illegal everywhere.

Lastly the "heroin" comment. Heroin is a strong addictive drug. Alcohol is a weak addictive drug. Food is addictive as well, and we have massive numbers of overweight people. It takes a lot of initiative to control one's weight after letting it go. It takes an almost impossible amount to do the same with alcohol or heroin. To stop using Google requires a significant amount of determination and effort. Certainly it can be done. This is an analogy, and before you note that they are not a proper logical argument, go back to your broad brushing of private/public funding of the internet.

If you say so. I don't see that much here.

A test for bias has to look at the position of the links by source not just the number of results.
Try this: choose a topic with political (or other) variation in views.

Make a list of sources that you think should be presented.
(say, BBC, Guardian, NYT, Washington Post, Washington Times, Breibert, RT, Le Monde, CS Monitor, Daily Telegraph ..)
Label each by say:
far right, racist, libertarian, far left, religious, progressivist, euro left, Stalinist, etc.

Put the question into the search engine.
For the top one hundred results list each by your categories. Give ranking points by position, eg 100 for first, one for the 99th.

Insinuation? No, assertion-
They sell stolen property.

Recognizing that the internet economy would have happened without government funding is not unsupported. We know that free economies grow and we know what those interested in computers were doing and interested in pursuing in both university research and private companies. Details of exactly the form it would take, including the packet switching technology supported by arpanet, could have differed in some ways if anything in the funding and who did the work were different.

Coppola, the engineer interviewed, had nothing to 'whistle blow' in the sense of political corruption or crime, which is the way the term is usually used, but there are policies and practices inside Google that are useful to know and which most people don't.

Coppola had some interesting insights, but nothing dramatic or new against Google. He said himself (in the video but not the synopsis) that he has no "smoking gun" and described the bias in Google in terms of personal biases that ordinarily have no impact on the company's technology, and then only in the form of choices -- made sometimes with political bias without realizing it -- of what is regarded as a reliable news source. We already know that the high tech industry is politically biased to the left everywhere, which he confirmed from his own observations.

He did not confirm the claims of deliberate "anti-conservative" filters in search results and said that his managers honestly do not realize the bias in their own selected sources, insisting that calling them liars in the response to Congress is too strong. Coppola did say that he could not go into more detail revealing proprietary aspects of the algorithms. The political weighting of search results is more subtle than is being acknowledged in the controversy.

He didn't say anything about the mass surveillance problem violating privacy, which is an area he does not work in. He could only report that in his experience engineers are very careful about handling personal data, but had nothing to say about the policies of why they have it at all and the inevitable consequences of that.

My impression from the edited video interview is that Project Veritas is hyping it beyond what it is. Coppola seems like a sensible engineer with some legitimate concerns, with a more objective perspective than what we usually get. The interviewer seemed almost disappointed as he tried to make the most of it. It would be interesting hear what else Coppola said that was edited out.

This has been a response to your and Nickursis'' points, not attempting to make your point. Please refrain from your snide personal "I know it is difficult" misrepresentation.

We were discussing Arpanet, not just Google. Arpanet funded the protocol development used for network communications, subsequently adopted by the internet, not search engines and web browsers, which did not exist then.

You said Arpanet "may not" have been a government plot. Others here claim it was. It was not.

Not using Google has nothing in common with an addict not continuing to use addictive drugs. All kinds of choices require effort. That does not make them like breaking a medical addiction.

We are talking about choices because that is what people do in contrast to anything like the requirements for getting off addictive drugs, by which you mischaracterized Google.

Google is a private company operating in the economy through trade. It does not have coercive control and this has nothing to do with heroin. Government physical force and economic power are opposites. That is fundamental in understanding and defending the nature of free, capitalist society.

That some companies or people have enough money to criminally bribe government officials if they wanted to does not make them criminals or indistinguishable from government exercise of power.

Governments remain in physical power by the consent of the governed or by force, not "fiscal resources". Almost everything now requires "fiscal resources" ; that not does not obliterate the distinction between government and private action. Providing a popular search service, which is generally the best of them, is not physical control and does not mean Google wields more power than most governments.

This thread, and others, are filled with conspiracy mongering by Nickursis (and others) claiming Google (and Facebook) was founded as and is a government conspiracy for control. It is a ridiculous assertion.

Political bias in tech companies is all part of free speech.
We might disagree with it but we have to defend their right to it just the same.

There's nothing to whistle-blow.

Old predictions that turn up as fact are a good starting point. Especially if if is a regular occurrence.

What is up with this "government plot" stuff? A group of people seeking power is not a government plot. It is a regular occurrence.

Neither does heroin have the coercive power of government, but it does pretty good on it's own.

I like assertions such as "This would've happened with or without government funding." Nice, unsupported, just for fun. Maybe, maybe not. However, totally irrelevant. It did not happen without government funding. We might all agree that we wish it was all private, but it was not.

"Google does not have the coercive power of government". Quite wrong. Sooo wrong. Google does not have the coercive power of the US government, one of hundreds. Google could buy Somalia's constitution tomorrow, and take it over. The coercive power of a government is based on its fiscal resources. Google has more than most governments, and could take over most states.

Google has massive power, fiscal and other. Google powers 73% of all searches. They control more information flow than the US Government, and any other government. This was (and is) given to Google by the people willingly, but it represents massive power nonetheless.

First, I was discussing Google, not the internet.
Second, I never asserted the internet was a government plot.

My point was that not using Google required a concerted effort, not unlike avoiding the use of addictive drugs. (I know it is difficult, but I (not you) get to make my point).

However, back to individual choices. Why are you asserting individuals must be responsible for their own choices? We are talking about free people.

Google does not have the coercive power of government. Government funding of research and some infrastructure should not exist but is a small portion of the private investment in the internet economy. The explosion in technology is a great value, not a government plot. It would have occurred with or without government funding.

"Googlebot" is the Google web crawler software that gathers information to index for searches, not "religious zealotry" and "silencing techniques".

The internet is very useful, not an addictive drug and not a government plot. Individuals are responsible for their own choices. A lot of them are making very bad decisions.

Cryptic John Birch Society style conspiracy theory "connections" don't prove anything. The history of facebook's origins is well known. It was not a government plot.

I just tried a Google search for "clinton email" and it returned "About 263,000,000 results (0.62 seconds)" with many pages of results.

Restricting that general search to Google News returned "About 38,400,000 results (0.16 seconds)" in multiple pages.

News on the narrower "project veritas clinton email" returned "About 11,600 results (0.22 seconds)".

An interesting result is a recent CATO article "Misleading Project Veritas Accusations of Google “Bias” Could Prompt Bad Law" https://www.cato.org/blog/misleading-...

Even Coppola said in his interview that "lie" is too strong a term. Zuckerberg is a snake; Google CEO Pichai does not realize the bias in his own sources. Coppola said he had "no smoking gun"; he was talking about the usual leftist dominance within the personnel, not claiming deliberate "anti-conservative" filters in search results.

A problem with these Congressional hearings is that Congress generally does not know what to ask or how to follow up. They're looking for political sensationalism.

Agreed, I was just laying out data. Of course, Q is not a verifiable source, however, I did find some other articles that agreed with the point, some people actually went digging and found the paper trails....amazing what facts prove...

Got it. We don't need to argue the details of the chicken and egg to agree that 1) there were huge US Government investment enabling the internet and 2) that Google wields massive power, more than most governments.