Amazon Conspiracy

[John Simkin]

I have noticed recently that by carrying out searches for books at Amazon you are given the titles of reactionary books that are linked to that subject. For example, I have just carried out a search for "Earl Browder: The Failure of American Communism" by James G. Ryan. It came up with:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?u...p;x=21&y=15

The top book for this search is not "Earl Browder: The Failure of American Communism" but "Red Spy Queen: A Biography of Elizabeth Bentley" by Kathryn S. Olmsted. The book that I was looking for only comes 6th in the list. Other books in the list are right-wing attacks on the American left with an emphasis on Soviet spies. Yet, Earl Browder was expelled by the American Communist Party for trying to make it independent of Soviet influence. Browder, was trying to develop a party that was like the British Labour Party (it had just had a landslide victory in the 1945 General Election).

[Evan Burton]

I have noticed that I sometimes get "unrelated" results; most often they are books they are trying to push.

I've found using an advanced Google search can be better.

[John Dolva]

This has always been my feelings about google and how it heierarches searches and the embedding of locators in html. It's built to homogenise search results and often relegates relevant sites to tiring scanning of page results after page results.. There are search engines that give better results. Often webferret which searches search engines gets much better results, yahoo is different again but it continually loads lso's, kazoo is another quite unique tool.

[Guest Tom Scully]

Sadly, John, I suspect Amazon is serving up what is most popular, i.e., what sells,

popular "stiuff" written by the likes of the son of Lucianne Goldberg , and by Amity Shlaes, former editorial board member of the "fair and Balanced" extremist Wall Street Journal editorial page.

If you are searching via the Amazon UK URL, it may very well be that Amazon is using data from U.S. sales patterns to provide search result priorities on its international sites.

They drink the kool-ade, on this side of the pond, John, to an extent that you, despite your

superb curiousity and research, cannot fully comprehend. My southern state is chock full of

evangelical voters who prize their republican party representation and the ubiquitous military

installations dotting the landscape. Abysmal school test scores, crisis level student drop out rates,

above average poverty levels and below average household income do not seem to concern most.

The ever rising numbers of church buildings and private church run schools serving mostly the

caucasian community are a sight to see. Billions for new road construction but cut backs for mass

transit and the curtailment of operating hours and routes of municipal and regional mass transit systems. Did I mention that we are committed to stopping the gays from marrying or adopting children?

News reports of the ingredients in the last meal requests of condemned prisoners are routinely broadcast. You can drive around with a loaded pistol in your car without any permit, simply a background check, despite the fact that murder by gunshot rates are dramatically lower in New York state, where there is a near prohibition on even transporting a loaded hand gun, since the 1920's.

http://www.amazon.com/Liberal-Fascism-Amer...s/dp/0385511841

Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning

Jonah Goldberg (Author)

Key Phrases: liberal fascism, fascist moment, fascist themes, New Deal, World War, United States (more...)

4.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (516 customer reviews)

http://www.amazon.com/Forgotten-Man-Histor...n/dp/0066211700

The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression (Hardcover)

Amity Shlaes (Author)

Key Phrases: New York, New Deal, World War (more...)

4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (306 customer reviews)

Edited February 18, 2010 by Tom Scully

[John Dolva]

I don't know if they've licenced to use googles proprietary search algorithms or they've written their own variant, but it appears highly configurale (to wit Google and China) but since the posts here the amazon ad load takes near time out time from here, but those things are easily delat with. I'm beginning to wonder if we are seeing an actual conspiracy unfolding. We'll see. (I tend not to follow posted links cause of the oft loaded bad ware, on another occasion I found one of mil's images infected and notigied the admin of the site and got a reply theyll deal with it, so as a source of more than info is not that farfetched a thought. Particularly the gathering at Fort Benning in Feb to look into such things as cyber warfare.)