The term "idiot" has been searched for more than one million times on Google. Typing this word on Google Images will make the search giant show pictures of the U.S. President Donald Trump.
This somehow happens as the word "idiot" ranks as the first more searched term in the U.S..
When Google's CEO Sundar Pichai was asked about this matter, questioning him whether this was an example of political bias in algorithms, Pichai denied the cause.
The CEO replied that Google Search results are based on billions of keyword ranked according to more than 200 factors, including relevance and popularity.
What this means, the term "idiot" has somehow being related to the U.S. President.
Defending his statement, Pichai replied that negative news can also be found when people search Google with the term "Google."
Pichai was asked when he was questioned for the House Judiciary Committee on alleged bias against conservatives and data collection practices.
He was confronted with the topic when Representative Zoe Lofgren, a Democrat from California, asked why Googling the word "idiot" surfaced pictures of President Donald Trump.
"We take the keyword and match it against their pages and rank them based on over 200 signals. Things like relevance, freshness, popularity, how other people are using it," answered Pichai. "And based on that, at any given time, we try to rank and find the best search results for that query."
This is met with Lofgren's respond: "So it's not some little man sitting behind the curtain figuring out what we're going to show the user?"
The link between the term "idiot" and pictures of President Trump has previously emerged earlier this 2018.
At that time, it was said that the cause of the association between Trump and the word “idiot” was partly sparked by London protesters’ choice of the Green Day song American Idiot during the President’s English visit.
When Redditors jumped into the crowd and upvoted posts of Trump with the word “idiot,” this manipulated Google's search ranking algorithms, making it think that "Donald Trump" and the word "idiot" are relevant. This manipulation attempt is known as "Google Bombing."
The Google Bombing incident was just one of the many instances when the Representative grilled Pichai on the potential biases around the company's search engine. Other matters include getting to know about Google's work in China and its data collection practices, as well as questions over biases and the political leanings of Google's employee base.
The hearing also revealed that some congress members actually had little knowledge of the technology industry.
For example, when Republican Steve King asked Pichai to explain why his granddaughter's iPhone was acting strangely, Pichai swiftly responded by explaining that Google is not making iPhones.