Google makes politics more interesting
It seems the folks at Google want to release some of their Omnipotence to the rest of us- and let us peek at what’s happening in the 2008 political race. While I think this is fantastic, I really wish Google would offer to reinvent the donation mechanism and reporting system, since the stuff the FEC built is utter crapola.
Take a look at who is searching what with the Google
Official Google Blog: More tools for citizen participation
Political participation isn’t just about casting your vote; everyone should be able to become an informed participant instantly. When Americans want to learn about candidates and issues using Google, we find that they want more than one source, and immediate results. Instead of sitting through entire television broadcasts, voters are going online to get their daily dose of politics – as they did during the primaries, when searches for political queries spiked.
We created a page on 2008 US election trends that highlights search queries on candidates by location to show how, during this election season, voters across the nation are getting politically engaged online. Use the Candidate Search Queries map to see which cities are searching more for Obama or McCain, and the News by Candidate tool on the trends page to see the latest headlines on each of the presidential contenders.
Our political outreach efforts are aimed at providing citizens with useful knowledge on where candidates, office holders and advocacy groups stand. As more Americans go online and take simple steps to participate in politics, we aspire to promote democracy and informed participation in the process by equipping voters with useful information through search.
Google has been called the database of “human intentions” with the ability to foresee trends based on what people are searching for. From my look at their search trends- the answer seems to consistently be Barack Obama.
An interesting twist to this is that Google has come under fire for temporarily shutting down a number of Blogger blogs. It appears that Obama supporters have been flagging those Blogger blogs with anti-Obama sentiments. A fascinating election year on many fronts.
http://bloggasm.com/whos-responsible-for-shutting-down-a-number-of-anti-obama-blogspot-accounts
Everyone loves to watch a train wreck. They are all googling trying to find out which of his previous statements he is going to deny saying next.