This is disturbing:
Today, out of curiousity, I wanted to find out the average of a first child in the United States.
I typed in www.google.com, entered the search term “average of first child united states,” and guess what the first search result I got was?“Family Planning in China: Though its cultivated land is less than the United States and India, China ranks the first in the world in terms of … In 1970, women’s average age at first marriage was 20.2 years, while in 1993 it was 22.67 years, up 2.47 years. …”
Followed in close second by: “Human Rights Record of the United …Since 1972, more than 80 people have been shot dead every day on average in the United States, including about 12 … The United States ranks first in the world in wantonly infringing upon the sovereignty of, and human rights in, …”
Both were from xinhuanet. I thought these were pretty damn strange results for such an innocent little search on google.com.
So, I used a proxy server, and came up with completely different results, which seemed to make more sense considering what I was searching for: “16 surprising facts about birth in the United States … “I had my first child, a boy at age 29. I had my second child, a girl at age 37. …”“US Census Press Releases: Estimated number of mothers of all ages in the United States. … Average age of women when they give birth for the first time [PDF] — a record high. …”
My conclusion:
China is already redirecting google.com to their bizarre alternative netherworld of google.cn. And even for something as innocent as the average age of a first birth in the United States, you’re clearly getting very very skewed results…
Via The Peking Duck