Google’s search algorithms expose racial discrimination, a new study by Harvard professor purports. It claims ads related to criminal records are more likely to pop up when "black-sounding names" are ‘googled’.

Latanya Sweeney, Professor of Government and Technology in Residence at Harvard, had found out that Google searches involving "black-sounding names" are more than 25 percent likely to produce ads that imply that person has been arrested than “white-sounding names”. 

What are “black- and white-sounding names”?

In her paper “Discrimination in Online Ad Delivery” (published January 28) Sweeney refers to the a Job Discrimination study that “used a correlation of names given to black and white babies in Massachusetts between 1974 and 1979.”

First, using those findings, she collected a list of more than 2,000 names that were suggestive of race. 

Names such as Lakisha, DeAndre, Jermaine, Leroy and Darnell more often tend to suggest that the person was black, while names like Allison, Kristen, Greg or Jack were considered to be white-identifying names.

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