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Google's Gatekeepers
theodp writes "With control of 63% of the world's Internet searches, as well as ownership of YouTube, the NY Times reports that Google is the most powerful and protean of the Internet gatekeepers, exerting enormous influence over who can find an audience on the Web around the world. Deciding what controversial material does and doesn't appear on the local search engines Google maintains in many countries — as well as on Google.com, YouTube, Blogger, Picasa, and Orkut — falls on the shoulders of Nicole Wong and her colleagues, who have arguably been given more influence over online expression than anyone else on the planet. Some find Google's gatekeeper role worrisome: 'If your whole game is to increase market share,' says Lawrence Lessig, 'it's hard to do good, and to gather data in ways that don't raise privacy concerns or that might help repressive governments to block controversial content.'"
Results 1 - 10 of about 1,640,000 for China's moon program. (0.14 seconds)
Cantankerous old coot since 1957.
but they already DO offer free beer and food.
Big deal. Porn is by far the most important one.
My only point is that google is an attractive target for a great many political interests both domestically and abroad.
Nah. If they take down Google, how else are they going to find out what to do with all those bombmaking materials?
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.