Google altered World Cup search results to spare Brazil further humiliation

If you do a Google search on the World Cup game in which Germany slaughtered Brazil 7-1, the top results will say things like “destroy,” “defeat,” and “humiliate.” But Google itself is choosing to steer clear of negative terms. The company has created an experimental newsroom in San Francisco to monitor the World Cup, and turn popular search results into viral content. And they’ve got a clear editorial bias. Around the world, billions of people kept both eyes fixed on the TV during the matches. In the Google newsroom, data scientists had one eye on the Brazil-Germany semifinal and the other on the computer screen. They were mining the company’s confidential, internal databases to see what people are searching for. Turns out in Brazil, the lyrics for a rallying chant got popular. Luciana Meinking Guimarães, the newsroom’s Portuguese translator, says there was an 18 percent spike in searches for the term “Brazil show your strength.” But that was before Germany’s fifth goal. Brazilians didn’t bother to look for the word “defense.” Instead, “shame” climbed up the charts. Guimarães listed off terms in the top 50 search results from Brazil: ” ‘Brazil what a shame.’ ‘It’s a shame to be Brazilian right now.’ ‘Shame,’ with the name of the team.”