Towards Regulating Gender and Racial Discrimination on Google Search Engine

Google search engine which no longer merely shape public understanding and access to the content on the World Wide Web but also impact and influence the opinion of its users by the search results it produces has been subjected to a lot of criticisms because of some racial discrimination and gender biases that plague software algorithms of its search results. As a result, this research paper is concerned with examining the biases and discrimination experienced on Google search engine by the female gender and the black communities.Over the years, Google has stated that the biases and discrimination on its page are results of its algorithm at work. While some other persons say Google search bias is a reflection of the white-dominated male workers behind Google’s search engine. Who is right? It is anyone’s guess if the algorithms involved are kept secret. Without knowing what Google does when it ranks sites, no one can assess when it is acting in good faith to help users, when it is biasing results to favour the white male-dominated engineers behind the machine or when it is it biasing and discriminating to favour the commercial interests of the company.The argument that search algorithms are what they are and must so forever appear to carry a lot of conviction in some quarters, but is a self-serving oversimplification and no true reflection of reality because search engines filter, tweak and manipulate its results and, as such, they tend to favour some entities and disfavour others by manual human intervention. The process must involve the application of some set of criteria. These criteria will be biased because they will either purposefully or indirectly give priority to some sectors of society and marginalize others. Accordingly, this paper argues that there is a need for human intervention behind the Google search engine.This paper emphasizes the need to regulate the Google search engine because information gotten from Google search engine pages impacts people's view about society and thus, should be regulated with more impactful policies. Although this paper acknowledges that regulation of Google search engine does seem problematic, this paper shall attempt if “law, norm, market, and architecture” might solve the problem of Google search engine biases and discrimination.Accordingly, this paper shall recommend other suitable regulatory measures to solve Google search engine biases and discrimination