Follow up to previous posting – an article by WSJ.com – How Google Interferes With Its Search Algorithms and Changes Your Results – please read – Search is complicated. The WSJ appeared set on seeing that complexity through a conspiratorial lens. Barry Schwartz on November 18, 2019. “…At first, I thought maybe the Wall Street Journal had uncovered something. But as I read through page after page while being shuttled down the West Side Highway towards my office in West Nyack, New York, I was in disbelief. Not disbelief over anything Google may have done, but disbelief in how the Wall Street Journal could publish such a scathing story about this when they had absolutely nothing to back it up. The subtitle of the story read, “The internet giant uses blacklists, algorithm tweaks and an army of contractors to shape what you see.” This line alone shows a lack of understanding on how search works and why the WSJ report on Google got a lot wrong, as my colleague Greg Sterling reported last week. Google is not certainly perfect, but almost everything in the Wall Street Journal report is incorrect. I’ll go through many of the points [in this article]…”