Megan Gray noticed a slide presented during the USA vs. Google trial that makes her believe "Google likely alters queries billions of times a day in trillions of different variations". For example, "you search for 'children's clothing' Google converts it, without your knowledge, to a search for 'NIKOLAI-brand kidswear', making a behind-the-scenes substitution of your actual query with a different query that just happens to generate more money for the company, and will generate results you weren't searching for at all. It's not possible for you to opt out of the substitution". The slide the author of this article saw isn't public and they only saw it briefly during a closed court room session, so they could be misinterpreting what they saw (it's not like Google's search algorithm is easy to understand), but hey, it's Google so we/I assume malice.
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