Manipuliert Google von Zeit zu Zeit seine Suchergebnisse? Sind Suchergebnisse wirklich immer objektiv und beruhen sie auf der strikten Anwendung eines Algorithmus? Ein etwas älteres Erlebnis aus dem Jahr 2004, anlässlich eines Gerichtsverfahrens gegen Google schildert John Battelle. Google spricht von einem technischen Problem:

"September 17, 2004 was the day the San Jose District Court was to hear arguments in the American Blinds case [regarding a dispute over the trademarked adwords “American Blinds”]. . . . Google had filed a motion to dismiss. . . .[When a] member of American Blinds’ legal team . . . [attempted to] test the system, he brought up Google and entered what had become a habitual search query: “American Blinds.” . . . . Every [other] time someone entered ‘American Blinds’ into Google’s search field, competitors to American Blinds came up on the screen. Only this morning, for some reason, they did not. The lawyer suspected Google had changed its results, and called colleagues in other parts of the country. Sure enough, searches in other regions returned different results, including the potentially infringing advertisements. . . . The lawyer quickly documented his findings."