What is right from wrong to Google?

Social media “Google” has become our main source of seeking information. Is the information we search for biased or non-biased? I personally have never stopped to question it until I saw the Ted video “the moral bias behind your search results” by Andreas Ekstrom. This Ted video compares Google searching Michelle Obama, and Anders Behring Breivik. Apparently, there was a racist campaign against Michelle Obama once. When you would Google search Michelle Obama a picture of a distorted monkey would pop up. The same thing happened to Anders Behring Breivik when you would Google search him a piece of dog poop would appear. Both Michelle and Breivik were victims of cruel manipulative search results except Google intervened with Michelle Obama's racial picture and prevented that picture from popping up on Google searches and did nothing for Breivik's behalf. Google decided that Michelle Obama was an honorable woman and Anders Behring Breivik was not.

        Because Google, our major source of retrieving information has the power to evaluate individuals and control what information we receive from it, some might say it was wrong of Google to have only intervened for Michelle and not Breivik, but was it? Sure that both Michelle Obama and Anders Behring Breivik were both victims of manipulative search results but think about it, one individual was the first lady of the United States, and the other individual was a terrorist. In this particular case, there had to have been a moral evaluation. I understand that the Ted video says that Google isolates facts and that is true but there is a difference when speaking of knowledge and morality. Knowledge is comprehension of facts or skills gained through a persons experience or education. When speaking of morality you are speaking of right from wrong. In this particular case, I agree with Google’s action to have intervened on Michelle Obama's behalf.

Although many might disagree that Google intervened with one and not the other, the context of the situation was way different. Michelle Obama is a lawyer and was the first lady of the United States from the year 2009 to the year 2017 while Anders Behring Breivik is a Norwegian far-right terrorist responsible for killing 80 people. I don't believe Google was hiding or censoring information in this particular situation, I believe that it altered the way we accessed it in order to help our morality. One can argue that it's not immoral to make fun of someone that has done a bad thing, but that raises the question of who is Google to decide what is and isn’t morally righteous. Either way, I believe that Google plays a huge role in our everyday lives and because of that, they have a big responsibility in not only what information we receive out of our Google search results from it but also in it controlling morality on searches from it. It is such a difficult task to be a good person but it is an even bigger task to face a moral dilemma and know how to proceed. Ultimately, whether Google controls morality on what we search for on it, we the users get to determine whether or not to listen. We are our own decision makers.