Today, Google Trends came up with just 14 results. I figured it was a glitch, so I refreshed the screen. The last keyword was still marked at 14. Then, a few minutes later, that changed to 18, and as of this writing, Google Trends still produces 18, and not 20, keyword results.
Something is wrong.
As noted by this blogger on April 14th 2011, Google Trends has been long downward spiral of results offerings, falling from 100 to 40 in 2009, then from 40 to 20 keyword results in 2010.
And now, this year in April, Google removed "Hot Topics" from the Google Trends keyword search results report page
While the reason given by bloggers was "spamming" of topic results, I'm starting to remain fast to the idea that Google is really trying to force the World to read traditional media sources, and not blogs.
Let's face it, Google has been under constant legal attack from media companies like The Associated Press, and Google News took off on a weird and ill-advised, and still ongoing attempt to save these organizations, even at the expense of trying to slow the spread of democratic media, push many good blogs off the system, and in the face of constantly improving communications technology that allows for the democratization of media.
The real media results on Google rest with the largely hidden from view Google Blog Search. That Google makes it hard to find Google Blog Search, where Google News is in your face with almost every search action, is no accident.
That Google has allowed Google News to be such that it's news results are in "topic clusters" rather than first, and most recent results regardless of topic, is no accident. It allows traditional media to set the news agenda, even as blogs and social networks are really telling the story of what's happening.
In short, Google's doing evil, taking advantage of its monopoly position in the search market to manipulate the news. That's a horrible outrage that should spark a Congressional Investigation - forget Weinergate; Newsgate is much more important.
We have to take action to stop this kind of online control of what news is presented to us. The question is, what search platform should we use to overcome Google?
I highly recommend Blekko. Based in San Francisco and with a 22-employee team, the new company's effective search engine technology and hash-based categorization of search is starting to catch on. Blekko is now the preferred search engine for the giant Topix network.
The nezt step for Blekko should be to restore this news chaos. Google is going way too far. The firm that once focused on doing good, seems to be far more interested in doing bad by controlling the news.
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