Jack Nicas

An analysis by online-search marketer CanIRank.com found that 50 recent searches for political terms on Google surfaced more liberal-leaning webpages than conservative ones, as rated by a panel of four people.

The CanIRank analysis has weaknesses, most notably its reliance on four people’s judgments. Moreover, the findings are somewhat mixed: The searches surfaced more pages rated as “liberal” than “conservative” on a 5-point scale, but more pages were rated “very conservative” than “very liberal.” Still, the report’s findings may fuel concerns about the influence of a handful of internet companies and their often-opaque computer programs. Facebook Inc. is battling accusations that it widely circulated false news stories during the presidential campaign.

Alphabet is rethinking its high-speed internet business after initial rollouts proved more expensive and time consuming than anticipated, a stark contrast to the fanfare that greeted its launch six years ago.

Google Fiber has spent hundreds of millions dollars digging up streets and laying fiber-optic cables in a handful of cities to offer web connections roughly 30 times faster than the US average. Now the company is hoping to use wireless technology to connect homes, rather than cables, in about a dozen new metro areas. Meanwhile, the company is trying to cut costs and accelerate its expansion elsewhere by leasing existing fiber or asking cities or power companies to build the networks instead of building its own.