Google denies altering search suggestions for Hillary!

[garyoak99]

Google says that its search suggestions haven't been altered to help Hillary Clinton. Nor, it says, are they programmed to help any other candidate. "Google autocomplete does not favor any candidate or cause," a Google spokesperson says in a statement.

The statement comes in response to a YouTube video by SourceFed claiming that Google is hiding negative autocomplete results for Hilary Clinton. The video pointed out that Google doesn't suggest "Hillary Clinton crimes" when you type in "Hillary Clinton cri," whereas both Yahoo and Bing do. It found the same thing when typing "Hillary Clinton ind" in search of "Hillary Clinton indictment." It argued that both ought to show up, given each search's popularity in Google Trends.

There appear to be a couple different reasons for why this is happening. The first being that Google does, for all people, filter out "offensive or disparaging" search predictions — and "crime" is one of the words Google consistently removes. This is true no matter who you're searching for, be it Al Capone or, as Vox points out, Bernie Madoff. So Google is hiding the autocomplete suggestion "Hillary Clinton crime," but it's also doing that for everyone else, including people who have actually been charged and convicted.

http://www.theverge.com/2016/6/10/11906912/google-denies-autocomplete-search-manipulation-hillary-clinton
_________________

[akeo]

Google autocomplete is an absolute pain in the rear end. It doesn't matter what you search for it never comes up with the right thing that you actually want it to, which is why I always disable it. That way, I type what I'm looking for and don't have to rely on a piece of code to guess what I'm trying to say when I know what I want to write.

[garyoak99]

I actually have it on because sometimes I'm looking for a singer or actor that I don't quite have the correct spelling of or I'm trying to remember their name.

How do you turn it off?
_________________

[akeo]

I don't know how to turn autocomplete off in any of the Microsoft browsers but I'm sure a quick search will throw up dozens of results but I use Firefox and the method is as follows:

Go to home page and type about:config into the address bar and press enter, you'll get a page saying (usually) 'here be dragons', just agree and you're taken to a page of all the settings, scroll down to autocomplete, highlight the line and change 'true' to 'false'. It's pretty much all Boolean in there, just make sure you don't change anything you're not sure about.

In opera it's pretty similar, type about:config into the address bar and press enter, click privacy settings on the left and uncheck the box for autocomplete in there.

They're the only two browsers I ever use so I can't help past that I'm afraid.