B.D.: Thanks for the response. Those negative autocompletes certainly suggest an innocent explanation for the “Islam is” oddity.

There certainly is an odd pattern at work. “Islam is” gets you nothing, whereas the same query with the name of bunches of other religions (Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism) gets results, usually prominently including “____ is false.” However, “Muslims are” gets the same blank result as “Islam is,” but this is consistent with adherents of other religions. Searches in the form “____ are” gets you nothing with most terms for adherents of religions (Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists) and common ethnic terms (blacks, whites, Asians, African-Americans, European-Americans). Filling the blank with other terms like political labels (Republicans, Democrats, libertarians) provides (often derogatory) results.

Overall, this suggests to me that Google is intentionally blanking results for searches like “Christians are,” “Jews are,” “Muslims are,” and included “Islam is” as well (but not “Christianity is,” “Judaism is,” etc.). One wonders, though, why they would do that without also blanking results for “why are Christians,” “why is Islam,” etc. (which do get results unlike the equivalent queries with declarative phrasing).

Islam is the light baby doll.

Eugene Volokh: B.D.:The lack of auto-completes for “Islam is” does seem odd. But “Mohammed is” yields, among others, the autocompletes “… a false prophet,” “… the antichrist,” “… a liar,” “… satan,” and “… a pig.” “Why are Muslims” yields “… so violent,” “… terrorists,” and “… so stupid.” “Allah is” yields “… satan.” So my tentative guess is that there’s no deliberate human editing involved, but just some odd artifact of the computerized search algorithm. (I realize that maybe there’s just some highly incomplete human editing, but that doesn’t seem to be the likelier explanation, at least unless we see some more evidence.)

Thanks for the response. Those negative autocompletes certainly suggest an innocent explanation for the “Islam is” oddity.

Gone are all attempts to “get head” or sex of any kind from the girlfriend/wife – but trust and love and losing weight are all still there – as is shaving.

Yet we see “How do I get my wife to…”

swing….
sleep with me….

Seems like sexual frustrations and unconventional desires are not in fact lost on Google….

Also, lest someone accuse Google of planting/editing these, the number of potential search terms (including various combinations) is truly vast (say # of english words^5?). Human intervention couldn’t possibly account for all of these, save perhaps avoiding auto-suggesting phrases with possibly-obscene terms in them.

B.D.: As someone who is computer-inclined, what is your view of the “Islam is . . .” auto-complete weirdness?

Google has always been a highly political company.