Shhhh: GOOGLE Censorship

[Warrior-Mentor]

Google's motto is "Don't be Evil."

Yeah. Well...nothing in there about being fair, right or not censoring...

http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/a...-to-islam.html

Try it for yourself.

Then, set your search engine for www.bing.com

Their first prompt when you put in "islam" is "islamic sharia law" Interesting....

[SF0]

Unfortunately, Google is well known for censorship at the request of different countries. It's all about the money to them, not what is right.

http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2007-03-02-n19.html

[Sigaba]

FWIW, Google searches for:

• "Islam is dangerous" produced 14.5 million hits in 0.21 seconds
• "Islam is evil" produced 15.3 million hits in 0.39 seconds
• "Islamic law is oppressive" produced 1.32 million hits in 0.41 seconds
• "Islam promotes violence" produced 7.5 million hits in 0.36 seconds

In each case, many of the results on the first page hardly can be considered to offered favorable views of Islam or of Muslims.

In regards to the primary allegation of the blog entry, is the absence of search suggestions an act of censorship or is it a reflection of Google sending back suggestions based upon other searches?

And even if the undocumented allegations in the blog entry are accurate, so what? Google is a business. If one doesn't like the way a business is run or the products it offers, one is free to find alternatives.

Or one can do what Ms. Geller did: post a blog entry about being a victim of a corporation's cowardly refusal to participate in her campaign of self promotion. Amazingly, one gets zero suggestions for "Pamela Geller is".

Source is here.

Newly asked questions
What content does Google censor outside China?

Outside China, Google blocks only websites with child abuse images and certain values from its search of ranges of numbers.

The latter restriction, according to Google's worldwide policy counsel Andrew McLaughlin, tackles identity thieves using the search engine to trawl the web for credit card and government identification numbers, such as US social security numbers. It is still possible to search for individual numbers within these ranges, so owners can check these are not online.

"Beyond that, we don't do affirmative policing," McLaughlin told an Oxford University seminar earlier this month. "That's for legal, and just value, reasons."

However, localised Google services abide by the law of the relevant country. McLaughlin described a legally-enforced, secret blacklist run by Germany's BPjM, the country's Federal Department for Media Harmful to Young Persons, as "troublingly free of the kind of checks and balances you would expect". Google.de complies, albeit with an announcement when links have been blocked.

But although Google redirects users in Germany to Google.de through "geotargeting" (identifying your location from your internet address), it does not stop them switching to the uncensored Google.com; the link is on the front page (www.google.com/ncr).

Jonathan Zittrain, professor of internet governance and regulation at the Oxford Internet Institute, described this as a "gossamer-thin fig leaf" of compliance with national regulation. "The more optimistic way to characterise what's going on is that governments recognise there are limits to their jurisdiction," McLaughlin replied, adding that geotargeting is easy to get around through anonymous web-use services.

Of China, where users cannot avoid the nationally censored version, McLaughlin said the company had decided some Google was better than none for the Chinese. "We think we're making an empirically justifiable calculation," he said. "It is a contestable argument."

He said that Google.com and Blogger are "the most free-speech parts of our offering", but that Google Earth had not used new images of Beirut showing bomb damage from Israel's conflict with Hizbullah last summer. McLaughlin said that doing so could have convinced governments, some of which control aerial imagery of their country, to insist on pre-publication checks, although the US and UK have taken a relaxed attitude.

"So far, we haven't degraded or blurred an image at the requirement of any government," McLaughlin said of Google Earth, adding: "I don't know how much longer that will be true."

[dadof18x'er]

Originally Posted by Warrior-Mentor

Google's motto is "Don't be Evil."

Yeah. Well...nothing in there about being fair, right or not censoring...

http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/a...-to-islam.html

Try it for yourself.

Then, set your search engine for www.bing.com

Their first prompt when you put in "islam" is "islamic sharia law" Interesting....

they must not have gotten around to "mohammed is "yet, you get all kind of negatives on that search

[Paslode]

Google, Bing, Yahoo all come with the same results.

*EDIT*

No they don't.....quite interesting to say the least.

[dac]

Originally Posted by Sigaba

FWIW, Google searches for:

• "Islam is dangerous" produced 14.5 million hits in 0.21 seconds
• "Islam is evil" produced 15.3 million hits in 0.39 seconds
• "Islamic law is oppressive" produced 1.32 million hits in 0.41 seconds
• "Islam promotes violence" produced 7.5 million hits in 0.36 seconds

The feature she was highlighting is called "Google Suggest". This is the dropdown box with suggestions of the most popular search strings that start with your typing and completely separate from the search algorithm.

Google has some pretty smart people working there, I find it a little hard to believe that the phrase "Islam is" would have ZERO matching popular searches while every other religion would have a full list. Well written software would not work that way on accident.

I'm not putting on the tinfoil hat just yet, but it is ready in case I need it.

*EDIT*

I just tested bing.com and it had no suggestions for "Hinduism is", maybe Microsoft is pro-India today.

[Sigaba]

Originally Posted by dac

The feature she was highlighting is called "Google Suggest". This is the dropdown box with suggestions of the most popular search strings that start with your typing and completely separate from the search algorithm.

Yes. I am aware that she's talking about Google Suggest. Hence, my reference to "the primary allegation of the blog entry." My broader focus is her accusation that Google is motivated by cowardice and engaged in acts of censorship.

I offered my search results to show that if she could just summon the energy to type a few more words and did some reading, she could find for what she was looking.

Then again, were she to type a few more words and do some reading, she'd be doing actual research and then she'd be deviating from her primary objective as a blogger.

What might she have found had she done some research? Maybe the article quoted above. Maybe she'd have found the following from Google's support page, available here.

We try to filter out suggestions that include pornographic terms, dirty words, and hate and violence terms. If you encounter a term that should not be suggested, please let us know by posting in the Google Web Search Help Forum.

The above link would have taken her here. Use of the search function might have produced the results available here. And what a surprise! The results display a lot of end users doing what end users do--bitching endlessly about (i) software not working the way we think it should and making accusations of (ii) censorship, (iii)conspiracy, and/or (iii) incompetence.

Me? I'm guilty as charged for (i) and (iii). There's no other way to explain the fact that Google Suggest does not produce "Carla Gugino loves Sigaba" or "Robert B. Parker wishes he wrote as well as Sigaba."

Originally Posted by dac

Google has some pretty smart people working there, I find it a little hard to believe that the phrase "Islam is" would have ZERO matching popular searches while every other religion would have a full list. Well written software would not work that way on accident.

I'm not putting on the tinfoil hat just yet, but it is ready in case I need it.

Based upon my experiences working in the software industry with some frighteningly intelligent people who made a really wide array of products, I can say that at times the accident was well written software.

And from my experiences, I can tell you that when push comes to shove, software engineers, developers, and coders are going to accede to the wishes of the business development team who are going to listen to the requests/complaints/desires of their clients, customers, and other important stakeholders.

This is to say that, contrary to rumor, the digital age is a lot like the machine age. Then, like now, the most important language is money.

[lisam]

She's right on the auto-suggest thing. But Pamela Geller is...interesting. I'm pretty Republican..but she seems to me...beyond neoconservatism, at least about some issues.

[Warrior-Mentor]

Originally Posted by lisam

She's right on the auto-suggest thing. But Pamela Geller is...interesting. I'm pretty Republican..but she seems to me...beyond neoconservatism, at least about some issues.

Intense could be one word you are looking for.

[dac]

Originally Posted by Sigaba

(iii)conspiracy, and/or (iii) incompetence.

Me? I'm guilty as charged for (i) and (iii).

Which iii are you guilty of?

I am well aware of all of your points about the industry, and I could not agree more. I can say for sure MY software never works perfectly.

I have, however, seen Google remove "War Porn" videos on youtube within days for being hateful, but leave the jihad recruitment videos up indefinitely. That is handled some admin following company policy, not an automated algorithm.

Can't... resist... tinfoil........

[Ryanr]

If Google is intentionally filtering suggestions that would offend Muslims they're doing a miserably bad job. Try "Is Islam" ("violent" / "evil"), "Muhammad is" ("a false prophet" / "satan" / "the antichrist") or "Islam should", "Islam will", etc...

If they did intentionally remove that result I bet it's due to a particularly nasty suggestion that made it into the list somehow -- which is totally possible if you all remember how Bush critics managed to link "miserable failure" to the official Whitehouse biography of President Bush. There could plausibly be a new sort of "Google bomb" that gets things into that suggestion box. Heck, for that matter, this could be an action by Google to rectify a semi-malicious tamper by pro-Islam folks -- it's totally possible that somehow something like "Islam is the only true religion" got pinned to all 10 suggestion slots (that'd be the "bug") and they just disabled it while they're fixing it.

All totally conjecture, I know, but my point is that there are a number of reasons ranging from censorship to error to something in the middle.

edit: "Quran is / The Quran is" has pretty colorful results too.

[BigJimCalhoun]

Google only recently started celebrating Memorial Day on their page. The did all sorts of stupid things like Picasso's birthday, but avoided Memorial day each year.

[Sigaba]

Originally Posted by BigJimCalhoun

Google only recently started celebrating Memorial Day on their page. The did all sorts of stupid things like Picasso's birthday, but avoided Memorial day each year.

BJC--

Your observation raises interesting questions.

• Is a company's primary responsibility to its owners or to the country where it has its corporate offices?
• What serves the United States better? A company that follows a business development plan determined by its management team and thus demonstrates the superiority of American democratic capitalism or one that makes decisions based upon the desires of some of its end users?
• Does Google's charitable foundation, located here, balance out criticism such as yours?

[Richard]

Google only recently started celebrating Memorial Day on their page. The did all sorts of stupid things like Picasso's birthday, but avoided Memorial day each year.

I've seen Christain schools remain open on Memorial Day to make up 'snow days' and still be able to end the school year as planned - and I know of few commercial businesses who are closed around here on Memorial Day because it's an important day for all those BIG Memorial Day Sales. Seems like nothing says we appreciate and honor the sacrifices of our veterans like a good old-fashioned American commercial sales event with flags flying everywhere.

And so it goes...

Richard's jaded $.02

[LibraryLady]

Originally Posted by Paslode

Google, Bing, Yahoo all come with the same results.

*EDIT*

No they don't.....quite interesting to say the least.

Considering their algorithms are proprietary, it's no wonder they have different results.

Don't be a slave to one search engine - there are a ton of them out there, each with a different bent. None is perfect.

LL