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by scott_s 2533 days ago
I got curious and tried the names of a bunch of public figures. Some of "<first and last name> e" yielded "email" as the suggestion. But these did not: elizabeth holmes, tom jones, tom cruise, brad pitt, gwyneth paltrow, roger federer, will smith, jimmy carter.

Since Hillary Clinton is not unique, then it's not proof that her results are treated differently.

3 comments

Why would you expect “brad Pitt email” to be something that auto completes? You would, on the other hand expect “Hillary Clinton email” to auto complete because there was a huge controversy about it.

I’m not saying google is manipulating auto complete intentionally (though they might be), I’m just saying your counter examples are irrelevant.

It would be like “Donald trump Russia” NOT auto completing then someone saying “but neither does Taylor swift Russia, so we’re good.”

The poster claimed Hillary Clinton was unique, meaning the only person that applied to. For me, she was not. Since she's not unique, then her being unique can't be used as evidence.

Claiming that she's unusual, since you expect it to work for her based on stories written about her is a different claim.

You're misrepresenting my claim.

1. I said "only for Clinton" in the contect of Trump vs Clinton. Then I compared to other U.S. politicians, where the example still holds. The intended meaning is perfectly clear.

2. Obviously the fact that Clinton was the topic of a scandal involving email is the assumed context here. That's why I said "if anything, we would not expect "email" to be autocompleted for trump" (implied: but for Clinton, email is a more relevant search term based on published news, etc.).

They all work fine for me, e.g., 'tom jones emai' -> 'tom jones email', only Clinton didn't.
None of those other people were involved in major stories with email in the headline. If you look at the actual results, you'll see that it doesn't make any sense to not get suggestions for "Hillary Clinton email".

Compare these results:

* https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=hillary%20clinton%20em...

* https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=will%20smith%20email