tedster - 1:59 am on Sep 13, 2010 (gmt 0)

if its auto suggesting such things i can see why and make my own mind up

A very good point. I do note that Google has not purged all negatives from their Suggestions - not at all. The first example I thought of trying was [domain registration scam] and both the Suggestion and the Instant results were there.

There are legal implications both ways. Google is slipping from merely organizing the world's content into offering an editorial element. They could be "evil" both because of Suggestions they do show and Suggestions they don't show.

Just as the regular Press doesn't just report the news but also shapes it, Google is not a neutral passageway for the world's information. As others here have remarked, Google is not exactly a "search engine" anymore.

This influence is subtle, but that subtlety has the potential to be more insidious. If people were already asking for transparency in the ranking algorithm, it seems to me that transparency in the Suggestions algorithm is even more critical, especially with the Google Instant interface.