In the run-up to this year’s US presidential election, many controversial reports of fake news about the Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and the Republican candidate Donald Trump were surfacing throughout the country. Google and Facebook found themselves at the center of this controversy as they faced accusations of promoting factually inaccurate and outright false news pieces which influenced the outcome of the election. And while Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg dismissed these allegations as being “pretty crazy,” Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai wasn’t as convinced that Internet giants are entirely blameless for the entire ordeal. In a recent interview with the BBC, Pichai admitted that fake news could have certainly influenced the outcome of the election seeing how narrow the final results were.
Back then, the CEO of Google promised that the Mountain View-based tech giant will do whatever it can to prevent facilitating dissemination of fake news in the future. The first step in that endeavor is to exclude outlets which distribute false information from Google’s advertising network and consequently cut off their revenue streams, a move which Google announced a few days ago. As for the next step, a report out of Business Insider notes that the Internet giant is planning to eliminate the “In The News” section from Google Search results. Now, note that there’s a difference between the News and In The News features of Google’s search engine. In other words, Google won’t be removing the ability to search for news using its engine, just the algorithm which automatically highlights news stories related to a user’s query on top of Google Search Results.
The In The News section featured by the desktop version of Google Search will allegedly be replaced by a Top Stories tab, similar to the one currently present in the mobile version of Google’s Internet search engine, sources claim. While the said section allegedly slated for removal has been the only element of Google Search implied in the fake news controversy described above, Business Insider reports that this change has been planned for a long time and was only sped up by these issues. The Google News tab that is only populated by trusted websites whose legitimacy has been confirmed by Google isn’t going anywhere. While the Mountain View-based tech giant is yet to confirm or deny this report, more information will hopefully follow soon.