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Google is ahead of them, this is MS's response. Platypus and more on Platypus.

Some guy made the poem already http://blog.outer-court.com/forum/94717.html#id947 44

A truck records signal from your WiFi router? How about people taking a picture of your house to sell to banks and insurance companies? Or aerial close-ups of your backyard?

I totally agree with the ideas expressed in this post. There's no reason why MediaWiki software could not be updated to determine what links can reasonably be trusted.

Beyond this, I'm certain that Google could easily (and I mean **easily**) ignore "nofollow" on links in the Wikipedia sites. It would certainly be a very minor tweak to their spidering/ranking software. I would even encourage Google and other search engines to work against what Wikipedia is doing. It's anti-community and anti-web.

I say all this as three-year editor on Wikipedia. The spamming isn't *that* bad.

Google. What a mystique! They can 'innovate' new forms of -

Cross-site scripting exploits:
http://blog.outer-court.com/archive/2007-01-01-n12 .html
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Google/?p=338

Exposure of personal and sensitive data:
http://www.finjan.com/Pressrelease.aspx?id=1261&Pr essLan=1230&lan=3

Data loss:
http://dream.sims.berkeley.edu/MT/vanhouse/archive s/000663.html
http://googlewatch.eweek.com/content/google_featur es/google_email_troubles_continue.html

Site failure:
http://status.blogger.com/

Privacy violation:
http://www.google-watch.org/bigbro.html
http://www.google-watch.org/krane.html

All links after that seem to be normal search engine hits.

And the parser is pretty intelligent too, I just tried it with "What is a slide rule for?" and got a meaningful answer!

Domain Name.......... googlified.com
    Creation Date........ 2006-02-06
    Registration Date.... 2006-02-06
    Expiry Date.......... 2007-02-06
    Organisation Name.... Feng Zeng
    Organisation Address. [home(?) address]
    Organisation Address. Columbus
    Organisation Address. 43229
    Organisation Address. OH
    Organisation Address. UNITED STATES

Admin Name........... Haochi Chen
    Admin Address........ [home(?) address]
    Admin Address........ Columbus
    Admin Address........ 43229
    Admin Address........ OH
    Admin Address........ UNITED STATES
    Admin Email.......... haochi.chen@gmail.com
    Admin Phone.......... [real phone number]

This is what it used to look like. It was pretty awesome.

It's been out for a while.
http://picasaweb.google.com
http://blog.outer-court.com/archive/2006-06-14-n55 .html

you put it in a bank and then access it when you need some of it

Well, you need to play for a bit longer to get to this point, but they actually start adding entries to the "off-limit" area, there-by forcing you and your partner to generate more specified results. This refinement process is a good idea, IMO, and will generate the best set of data with which to gauge the effectiveness of their recently aquired image analyzing software, Neven Vision.

http://blog.outer-court.com/patriot/

The problem is not necessiarly the web browsers (and most don't even use Firefox let alone have even heard of that that extension). The problem is the websites that don't properly take steps to protect against XSS (e.g. HTMLencode user input).

Most recently we saw this problem in Netscape's portal.

http://blog.outer-court.com/archive/2006-07-26-n73 .html

Developers need to start thinking not only about how to solve the particular business problem but also about how their code could be potentially abused by attackers and take active steps to mitigate that risk.

But to be fair, Google Accessible doesn't find itself either: http://blog.outer-court.com/accessible/?q=google (don't even try 'search engine'...)

And this is reflected on the search as well.

http://blog.outer-court.com/accessible/?q=search

Searching for "search", google doesn't even show up in the acessible list.

At least they are honest: http://blog.outer-court.com/accessible/?q=google They don't put their own page on the top, as it isn't very "accessible"... :-)

More irony: Searching for Google gives Wikipedia's article first place.

Same with M$. In fact, just about anything that has an article in Wiki goes first.

Far from it... try it for yourself with the compare tool that was linked in the summary.

Also to add, it appears that Microsoft's Accessibility page isn't as accessble as the Windows XP Accessibility Resources page...

Comparison here

I apologize for going off on a tangent, but does anyone know if there's a meaning behind the colors of the letters in Google's logo? They don't follow the Roy G. Biv rule... The closest thing I could find to an answer was:
http://blog.outer-court.com/archive/2004_01_02_ind ex.html#107307127760339576
but that's not an answer.

Thanks for the extra information about the search terms used to reach your site. People interested in your page on might also be interested in Google and therefore likely to be Google users themselves. Again this could mean that the sample is not representative.

The second source helps confirm the conclusions though.

I think it's great that you made these statistics, it's just a shame that Slashdot linked to such a poor article which doesn't explain how the figures were calculated and what the errors margins are. I guess that's what Slashdot's 'Comments' section is for. ;)

Thanks again for replying!

Additionally, Google is allowed to crawl more of my site than MSN or Yahoo. However, based on the search terms used, I don't think this made that big of a difference (the majority of visitors from all these companies came looking for my BigTable article, which ranks highly in the big three search engines).

This is a moot point, because The Inquirer should have done their job and mentioned Philipp Lenssen's blog post where he uses a much larger sample set and gets similar results.

My original sample was very small (maybe 20,000 hits in total, with only some of them being from the companies in question). However, Philipp Lenssen over at Google Blogoscoped took a much larger sample and got similar results.

Of course, when you get your news from the fourth tier of information (one not particularly known for respectability in the first place), you are more likely to get some misinformation. In this case: my website->Google Blogoscoped (where more content was added)->Tech Web->The Inquirer.

Andrew

PS: This has gotten way more coverage than I ever imagined. First it was dugg and now slashdotted... wow.

The vast majority of computers at Google are Linux boxes. They give us a laptop also, and we get to choose between a Mac Powerbook and an IBM Thinkpad.

Most people are Linux-only

I wonder if Captain Copyright is tolerant of parodies?

I enjoyed Philipp Lenssen's parody of Captain Copyright over at Google Blogoscoped.

I dont know of a google music yet...

But Google's robots.txt does!

Google Blogoscoped had excellent coverage of the Press Day ... and today posted a very informative step-by-step of how to use Google Co-op.

Google Blogoscoped had excellent coverage of the Press Day ... and today posted a very informative step-by-step of how to use Google Co-op.

For the third year in a row, Urgo's list of April Fool's Jokes on Websites contains the most complete list of April Fool's Day pranks websites have created. Featured by news.com.com.com.. and Microsoft, the site strives to list EVERY joke site, and is updated every few minutes with new verified jokes.

Here is a sample, the twenty most popular ones:
blog.outer-court.com - Google Rooms
thinkgeek.com - USB Tanning Center, RFID Blocking T-shirt, Grow Your mymsnsearch.com - fake (but hilariously accurate) search results gtachicago.com - gta chicago does not exist, (*hint check the whois info*)
tveps.net - Isaac 'Chef' Hayes not leaving southpark after all. Comes clean that it was a publicity stunt.
iwantoneofthose.com - tiny device that downloads your brain's memory to a 2GB USB Flash Drive
blizzard.com - BLIZZARD ENTERTAINMENT® PRESENTS BURGERCRAFT(TM)
bolloxcomics.co.uk - Myspace parody
figuiere.net - int is_computer_on(void)
wiebetech.com - 5 TB iPod
googlesystem.blogspot.com - Google Browser is finally launched. Installer 1.68MB
steampowered.com - VALVe purchased by Apple
slashdot.org - OMG!!! PONIES!!! (and pink layout)
ogrish.com - (NSFW) Bizarre Baby Born In Nepal
worldofwarcraft.com - Blizzard to put Wisps as a playable race for World of Warcraft.
gearlog.com - Laptop Lingerie: Bringing Tech & Pleasure Together
2600.com - 200600 google spoof
bungie.net - Bungie's next game, Pimps At Sea, progessing nicely for the Xbox360
forums.worldofwarcraft.com - World of Warcraft 1.11 patch notes leaked
theregister.co.uk - customise The Register to suit your needs - from blocking ads, to selecting the kind of stories you really want to read.

For the third year in a row, Urgo's list of April Fool's Jokes on Websites contains the most complete list of April Fool's Day pranks websites have created. Featured by news.com.com.com.. and Microsoft, the site strives to list EVERY joke site, and is updated every few minutes with new verified jokes.

Here is a sample, the twenty most popular ones:
mymsnsearch.com - fake (but hilariously accurate) search results
thinkgeek.com - USB Tanning Center, RFID Blocking T-shirt, Grow Your Own 1up Mushroom Kit, Caffeine Inhaler, and more
blog.outer-court.com - Google Rooms
gtachicago.com - gta chicago does not exist, (*hint check the whois info*)
tveps.net - Isaac 'Chef' Hayes not leaving southpark after all. Comes clean that it was a publicity stunt.
blizzard.com - BLIZZARD ENTERTAINMENT® PRESENTS BURGERCRAFT(TM)
iwantoneofthose.com - tiny device that downloads your brain's memory to a 2GB USB Flash Drive
bolloxcomics.co.uk - Myspace parody
wiebetech.com - 5 TB iPod
googlesystem.blogspot.com - Google Browser is finally launched. Installer 1.68MB
figuiere.net - int is_computer_on(void)
steampowered.com - VALVe purchased by Apple
slashdot.org - OMG!!! PONIES!!! (and pink layout)
ogrish.com - (NSFW) Bizarre Baby Born In Nepal
worldofwarcraft.com - Blizzard to put Wisps as a playable race for World of Warcraft.
gearlog.com - Laptop Lingerie: Bringing Tech & Pleasure Together
2600.com - 200600 google spoof
bungie.net - Bungie's next game, Pimps At Sea, progessing nicely for the Xbox360
forums.worldofwarcraft.com - World of Warcraft 1.11 patch notes leaked
theregister.co.uk - customise The Register to suit your needs - from blocking ads, to selecting the kind of stories you really want to read.

"The Judge has granted the subpoena and orders that all e-mail messages, including deleted messages, be divulged. Google's privacy policy says deleted e-mail messages 'may remain in our offline backup systems' in perpetuity. It does not guarantee that backups are ever deleted. So much for the Delete Forever button."

This is kind of funny, considering this dude is trying to get his own email back and can't seem to get any help (not even a human response) from Google:

http://blog.outer-court.com/forum/22209.html

Maybe he should sue.

Sure. Check out this blog post about Google censorship of the violent imagery loving sites Ogrish.com and Rotten.com and the white supremacist site Stormfront.org.

I feel that they shouldn't be censored, but I always feel a sort of queasy moral indefensibility about that stance when defending the truly repugnant speech. Even so, slippery slopes and all that.

We must replace google, yahoo, msn et cetera with a Patriot Search Engine to ensure that Government-Approved Information is delivered to your desktop!

It can also that your search terms are automatically submitted to the government for analysis, without the risk of judicial oversight, congressional enactments, or probable cause. This will make your even more secure from terror, terrorism and terrorists!

Surely if you are a true patriot with nothing to hide and interested only in The Truth As Patriots Know It To Be, you will use Patriot Search today. If you don't, then surely in the interests of security someone will have to find out why.

We must replace google, yahoo, msn et cetera with a Patriot Search Engine to ensure that Government-Approved Information is delivered to your desktop!

It can also that your search terms are automatically submitted to the government for analysis, without the risk of judicial oversight, congressional enactments, or probable cause. This will make your even more secure from terror, terrorism and terrorists!

Surely if you are a true patriot with nothing to hide and interested only in The Truth As Patriots Know It To Be, you will use Patriot Search today. If you don't, then surely in the interests of security someone will have to find out why.

A new Patriot Search Engine has been developed to make us all more secure. Use Patriot Search to ensure that your search terms are automatically submitted to the government for analysis, without the risk of judicial oversight, congressional enactments, or probable cause. This will make your even more secure from terror, terrorism and terrorists!

Surely if you are a true patriot with nothing to hide, you will use Patriot Search today. If you don't, then surely in the interests of security someone will have to find out why.

A new Patriot Search Engine has been developed to make us all more secure. Use Patriot Search to ensure that your search terms are automatically submitted to the government for analysis, without the risk of judicial oversight, congressional enactments, or probable cause. This will make your even more secure from terror, terrorism and terrorists!

Surely if you are a true patriot with nothing to hide, you will use Patriot Search today. If you don't, then surely in the interests of security someone will have to find out why.

A new Patriot Search Engine has been developed to make us all more secure. Use Patriot Search to ensure that your search terms are automatically submitted to the government for analysis, without the risk of judicial oversight, congressional enactments, or probable cause. This will make your even more secure from terror, terrorism and terrorists!

Surely if you are a true patriot with nothing to hide, you will use Patriot Search today. If you don't, then surely in the interests of security someone will have to find out why.

What's being modified is the index contents, from which the results are automatically generated.

You may be correct, but that's not how it is characterized in the article:

Moreover, bmw.com.de's PageRank, the algorithms that assign every page on the web a sort of popularity ranking, has been reset to zero.

The PageRank has been reset to zero.

That being said, I went over to Matt Cutts' site. I can't tell for sure either way from what he says there. But he links to http://blog.outer-court.com/archive/2006-02-04-n60 .html, which seems to be the basis for the PageRank reset claim in the article.

Either way, I still find it to be somewhat dubious given the general nature of Google's statement.

Not just that; they are complaining about Google giving in to China's censorship, when Google have already been censored by the DMCA in the USA at least twice. One. Two.

It's a strange combination of plausible and frightening.

"Google's new China search engine not only censors many Web sites that question the Chinese government, but it goes further than similar services from Microsoft and Yahoo by targeting teen pregnancy, homosexuality, dating, beer and jokes."

Actually, some domains that are missing on Google.cn are available on e.g. Yahoo.cn or MSN. Declan also found, like I did during my comparison of Google.cn and Google.com, that users are not always informed when search results are missing. Declan points to a statement from Google, who say that "some Web site blockages are human errors that should be expected when any new service is introduced, and others represent a concerted attempt to comply with Chinese censorship laws."

I'm not exactly sure why it would be the place of the US Government to regulate privately owned corporations this way. The article mentions the "Congressional Human Rights Caucus" but I'm not sure that uncensored internet search is a basic human right (don't get me wrong, I'm against the cencorship, but I'm also against the government meddling with the private sector).

At the very least this is definetely a change in Google policy. As noted today on Google Blogoscoped Google has removed their entry on censorship, which used to read "Google does not censor results for any search term. The order and content of our results are completely automated; we do not manipulate our search results by hand. We believe strongly in allowing the democracy of the web to determine the inclusion and ranking of sites in our search results...". Attempting to navigate to the page now results in a "Document Not Found". It turns out that not being evil isn't necessarily in line with the interests of a corporation, who's job is to please shareholders and not users (or the government!).

I have a feeling of being watched by a Google Robot. What about my privacy?
Again, we take great measures to ensure no privacy is ever invaded. Even if there is a Google Robot next to you, it doesn't mean he records everything you say. You can think of him as a quiet neighbor doing gardening work. Do you suspect your neighbor to spy on your life... just because he's within a short distance of you?

The Chinese government is already blocking these web sites. Google is now blocking the meta data of these web sites. Why is it necessary? They are being strongarmed by the government. Block access to the metadata and deny that these websites even exist. If you do not we will instead deny you access to millions of potential searchers. Google has taken the top-down view that hey, if we don't pretend that some websites don't exist, we can't even tell these searchers that /any/ websites exist.

But wait a second - Google Corporate says that Google's mission is to "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful."

Google has organized this set of information. However, they are not making it universally accessible because they are pretending some of it does not exist. The layman's reading of Google's mission, which is the intended reading, leads to the thought that Google is violating it's core ethos. That Google is willing to accept two wrong's /can/ make a right.

Of the comparison filtered queries Philipp showed us, the one that strikes me as most awful is "human rights." When you pretend that some human rights don't exist, you can count on the fact that you have done something evil.

Google now censors it's search results for things that the Chinese government doesn't want it's people to read, just as it has been doing the same thing to comply with laws in France and Germany.

Here is some more information:
http://blog.outer-court.com/archive/2005-01-15-n50 .html
http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/050117-0906 38
http://sethf.com/anticensorware/general/google-cen sorship.php

So the question is, why are people so offended when Google censors for China, but think the same behavior is fine for Europe?

No, look at this blog post about the issue. It's from a while ago, and describes the behavior people are discussing. It's not a recent fix, it's been this way all along! (In other words, the "controversy" here is completely bogus.)

This has been known for a while in the user community. In fact, this tutorial is 18 months old, and demonstrates the "feature".

Patriot Search sounds like it's a search for missiles.

http://blog.outer-court.com/patriot/search/?q=porn