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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.'"
www.annabelleigh.net got blacklisted awhile back for allegedly hosting illegal material.
It doesn't. It never has. I take that back: If anyone posts illegal material it is removed swiftly. It's still mostly blacklisted.
Yahoo still indexes it.
Call this sour grapes and maybe it is but Google doesn't make much effort to fix errors that have only a small impact on the average person.
It's fitting that the NY Times used the word protean to describe Google, since the word also has alternative meanings as a bacteria and is linked to a greek fable of a shape-changing god of the ocean. The problem of the internet is that people, unlike machines, don't handle decentralization well. Anarchy has always been a temporary reprise from authoritarian constructs. In and of itself that's not a problem, but there's too much political pressure to censor, alter, and manipulate access to online information, and let's face it: Very, very few of us have the resources to conduct an exhaustive independent search on the internet.
Honestly, I'm surprised the United States hasn't declared Google (and other major internet pieces) a national security asset and moved to place it under government protection. They've done it before -- citizens who worked on the Manhattan project, for example. It could also easily be looked at as a target for terrorism -- blasting google out of the water would have significant press coverage; And isn't the big reason for terrorism to be visible? It's hard to come up with a bigger target online right now than them.
cue fear-mongerers and anti-government commentary in 5...4...3...
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Only 63%? Who's the other 37%?
I would've thought more in the >90% range.
I recently finished a year working at Google as a contractor. While it's a great company to work for, the employees are tilted to the extreme left. I think this is a direct result of their rapid expansion and hiring huge numbers straight out of college. The political leanings of the employees is going to affect how they do things, it can't be helped, even if they make an effort not to be politically biased. My politics are rather moderate, but in comparison to Google employees, I was a far right lunatic.
Until Microsoft starts doing things to stop people using other operating systems, there's no problem.
I seem to recall some issues around this... was there a trial..?
Nice rewording of my post, but it's a shame that you reinforced my message while you thought you were knocking my point down.
A consumer can search elsewhere.
A business can't just be listed elsewhere and operate on a level playing field.
If Google gets shitty and decides to ban a small business, they can put them out of business. It's that simple. They are a scary, scary thing in online business.