Google Begins Censoring US Search

I would count that as self-preservation for Google.

And since they are a private company, I don't think your right to free search, surpasses Google's right to exist without opening itself to litigation concerning the advertising of stolen materials.

The slippery slope theory is always a good one, but the fact remains there are powerful entertainment, software, and business interests who would prefer that piracy be not all that easy.

I can understand why.

I can't blame Google for deciding not to pick a fight with a dozen different industries over this.

I think it's called the long slippery slope or the rabbit hole.

Red letter day, indeed.


Ken

They've actually been doing this for a long time.

Bill your argument is basically an attempt to reduce legitimate
concerns to folly and labels of crying over spilled milk. Of course,
you can do that. But it also reduces your argument in certain terms,
as well.

I think it should be obvious that it's a matter of degree and the weight
in terms of possibilities.

Your censorship of what you put on your site, or the censorship that
occurs in here, or my daily censorship of what I say to people in here
is of little to no consequence in the larger scheme of things.

Hopefully you realize that. If you don't... well that's fine, too.


Ken

Google is a business, not a government organization.

They should be allowed to operate how they want as long as they aren't breaking any laws and they should be allowed to include or exclude any content they see fit.

Google is a crutch for many but it's not the only source for information.

Bill,

We can't talk about this, I think.. believe, because it involves politics. Right?

It's cool if you think it's folly. Totally cool.

See post #18...

and NCM called you a Norb. I wouldn't take that off him if I were you.


Ken

There are obviously lots of opinions on this...but at the end of the day, Google has the right to do what they want. Yes, they're incredibly powerful--for now--but if they start to do stupid stuff--and alienate their client-base, they can quickly become irrelevant--regardless of how big they are.

It's reaching to call it censorship, but you do realize that many businesses censor the content, products and services they provide.

An easy example is Paypal, they don't allow payments for adult content, products and services. As a business, that is their right even though those same adult products and services are legal.

Google is limiting the use of their business for illegal activities. They haven't even done that much, removing the autocomplete and instant search results for certain keywords isn't exactly censorship, the content is still available if you search for it, it just makes it slightly harder to find what I want when I type in Bill Platt WSO torrent.

It wasn't too long ago that an unflattering picture of Michelle Obama was the #1 ranked image for her name. There was pressure to remove it and google said nope, deal with it. So google isn't exactly caving in under pressure from the US Government to censor it's content. I believe that google is also currently having some issue with the EU so I guess they aren't caving in to them either.

Google (skynet) is allmighty and does what it wants.

When a private company becomes relied upon by the public as a whole they do have certain responsibilities. This "but they are private" doesn't cut it. Not to mention that if they start filtering term X then Y and Z will be close behind.

If they are filtering, they should have to tell people on the page that their results may not be displayed fully.

-g

I want to make sure I'm not missing anything here. The US Government took down numerous sites which were willingly breaking the law with no court order. I know I have not been in a US Government class in decades, but I think my memory is still working. I believe the Executive Branch of the US Government is in charge of law enforcement. Which means they were within their rights to stop an illegal activity.

The Judicial Branch then has the oversight role of determining if the decision was within the legal powers of the Executive Branch on the basis of the US Constitution. This portion of the game is still in play, as it should be.

What you allude to is the equivalent of saying a police officer should stop his pursuit of a bank robber to run and get a court order before he arrests the felon.

The "suspected" bank robber then is given his day in court. If he is found not guilty, for any reason, he is released back into the wild. This is the proper role of the court.

If in your example the sites are determined to have not violated any laws they will be allowed to re-open.

As far as censorship, has Google removed the sites from the Internet by some amazing feat of magic? Again, what you allude to is the equivalent of telling a newspaper they must publish pornographic pictures on the front page because otherwise they are censoring the artistic expression of some poor photographer and his model. Google has made a simple editorial decision, well within their rights.

The real news should be "Will Google removing Pirate sites in autocomplete and instant search have a negative effect on their market dominance?" Doubtful, since for most of us it increase relevance, not decreases it.

Google is at the mercy of their users. If they step out of the role of being "most relevant" and start playing games hiding what people want, they will have a very fast death. Power users are not tolerant of failure when there is a better option. They are also the ones who spread the word to the masses about what search engines work the best, fastest, and are most relevant.

If Google ticks off corporate America and their IT staffs it could be an extremely rapid failure. Imagine corporate America in a matter of months switching the default search engine on every desktop to Bing. Imagine they lock it down. Users will be using Bing in the office and shortly afterwards will start using it at home. Google is not succumbing to the forces of the US Government, but to the forces at play in their market.

IT Staffs want PIRATE SITES HARD TO FIND. They do not want employees downloading illegal materials into their shops. Of course, the next conspiracy theory will be corporate America and the US Government are just two sides of the same coin....

I personally hope Google stays adamant about making powerful decisions to increase relevance and improve the search experience. There might be times it kicks me in the shorts, but I'll adjust and keep moving forward.

Barry

(Probably didn't say a darn thing new for this thread, but it triggered my "political" response button.)

Well, for that matter, why stop with just SOME search terms? Why doesn't Google just stop letting us search for anything at all?

Honestly, reductio ad absurdum is not the smartest way to predict the future.

So, it's only the autocomplete and instant search results. The results are still in the index and if you typed in searches looking for pirated software specifically you would still get results.

Could the autocomplete /instant search results be considered as google recommending searches/sites to you?

Could some lawyer type interpret that as them recommending illegal activities? Would this be something a lawsuit could be based upon?
I don't know I'm not a lawyer..... but it smacks of google just covering it's ass, rather than any form of evil censorship.

Google, being a business, can do what they want to do with their search engine and I won't cry over censoring out pirate terms from their instant results or anything else they want to censor out. They do own the site.

As for their instant results ... I find that feature annoying and do my best to ignore it. I know what I want to search for when I'm searching and want to type it in the way I want it typed in myself.

At least you aren't in China where there actually IS censorship.

as of September 2010 Google has 71.59% of the search engine market share
I pray for the day it has less than 50%

@Brian -- It's interesting that there censoring Torrent. Cut that its sad. Why? Because not all "torrents" are illegal, sometimes you'll get a program like Ubuntu, or really any linux distro in "torrent" format so that you can get faster download times. I've also seen this with just regular legal software programs.

Caleb

That's not censorship: that's common sense.