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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.
Why is this news? Not that I agree with their political message, but World Net Daily (wnd.com) has been on the receiving end of Google's actions for a while now, supposedly due to political motives; so yes, this should worry anyone interested in free and open access to information.
..Google does it still pretty well.
There are much worse scenarios imaginable, which I'll leave as an exercise for the reader.
By saying this I don't want to bless all the problematic things that are happening, and it's certainly always helpful to "watch back", but we could be already living in an information nightmare already, which we aren't thanks, in part, to Google: If some other big company would have as big a share as Google, I wonder how they'd behave (don't mod me as troll please, it's just to show that we're still doing quite well.)
Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many.
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
So what is the big deal? Google censors some things, don't like it? Go to one of the thousands of other search engines. The thing about search engines is there is almost no learning curve and its incredibly easy to switch, want to use Yahoo? Just type in Yahoo rather than Google. Replace Yahoo for whatever search engine you want. If people really think that Google's censorship policies are bad for the internet the internet will switch to another search engine or create their own. The internet evolves fast, 10 years ago we didn't use Google we used other search engines, 10 years from now we probably won't use Google, we will use something else. Can't wait 10 years? Just go to a different search engine. Seriously, censorship is bad but this is the internet, not the government-regulated airspace, there is no FCC, it is global.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Only 63%? Who's the other 37%?
I would've thought more in the >90% range.
I use Google for searches, but I could easily switch to Yahoo, AltaVista or even MSN.
Until Google start doing things to stop people using other search engines, there's no problem. If people object to the dominance of Google, they must either campaign for users to move to other engines, or create a better engine and gain marketshare.
Results 1 - 10 of about 1,640,000 for China's moon program. (0.14 seconds)
Cantankerous old coot since 1957.
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.
Are you referring to US vs. Microsoft in 1998-1999? That was with regard to Internet Explorer, not the Windows OS. Microsoft lost, and they are paying their due penalty.
Google, on the other hand, has a much larger monopoly not just on search advertising but on information availability. Your bitter dislike of Microsoft is blinding you apparently; you'd rather fight over small fries like what browser you want use rather than fight over where you can find information and who controls it.
Try reading the newspapers, or even searching Google for 'google censorship in China'. The top of the search shows the BBC article http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4645596.stm.
So, in fact, China censors 'illegal material' which is a violation of UN treaties to censor in international communications. The idea of 'do no harm' is not good enough for such a large and powerful company: the idea of 'do no harm in China' by not bothering their government is in direct contrast to 'do no harm in China' by restricting the speech of those who disagree with the government.
That's assuming the Chinese are allowed to disagree with their government.
Your ad here.
Google has prevented me from using Yahoo!, Ask, etc. in the same vein that Microsoft prevented me from using other web browsers.
Does Google somehow physically stop me from using other search engines? No. Did Microsoft physically stop me from downloading and using other browsers? No.
Does Google very closely bundle their search engine with Google Docs, YouTube, Android, etc.? Yes. Did Microsoft very closely bundle IE with Windows? Yes.
Is Google being punished for doing the same exact same thing Microsoft was found guilty of in US vs. Microsoft in 1999? No.
Before internet, the gatekeepers to information were powers like NY Time.
90% of the people in this country will tell you that www.annabelleigh.net crosses the line. I'm guessing over 50% will have a strong reaction against it and would prefer that Google make sure it doesn't come up in their search results. So, you can see it as Google repressing a very small portion of the population, or you can see it as Google's doing the rest of us a big favor.
So, you can see it as Google repressing a very small portion of the population, or you can see it as Google's doing the rest of us a big favor.
Isn't that the standard definition of repression? Mistreat one group for the benefit, sometimes completely intangible benefit, of another?
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
"90% of the people in this country will tell you that www.annabelleigh.net crosses the line. I'm guessing over 50% will have a strong reaction against it and would prefer that Google make sure it doesn't come up in their search results."
It doesn't cross a legal line, so presumably you are referrring to a "moral" line. When you begin to moralise the internet, who can say where or when the resultant censorship will end?
"So, you can see it as Google repressing a very small portion of the population, or you can see it as Google's doing the rest of us a big favor."
Google is not doing a "big favor" for anyone. Censoring controversial material doesn't help readers; it simply makes them ignorant.
"To the future or to the past, to a time when thought is free" ~ Nineteen Eighty-Four
Why is it up to Google to do the work of the United Nations?
Google is a company just like any other, they have to operate within the law wherever they operate.
Not censoring a youtube video almost had Google employees arrested in Thailand until the bowed to pressure and deleted the lamest movie on YT with like 20 views. Governments have Google by the balls not the other way around.
I suggest you reassess your opinion of how much influence Google holds over governments because you'll find it's almost nothing, if any at all.