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Google's Gatekeepers
Posted by
kdawson
on Sat Nov 29, 2008 07:16 PM
from the can't-read-that-here-try-a-proxy dept.
from the can't-read-that-here-try-a-proxy dept.
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.'"
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They blacklist sites without checking the reason (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:They blacklist sites without checking the reaso (Score:5, Insightful)
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 [bbc.co.uk].
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.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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,
Re:They blacklist sites without checking the reaso (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:They blacklist sites without checking the reaso (Score:4, Insightful)
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?
Parent
Re:They blacklist sites without checking the reaso (Score:4, Insightful)
"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.
Parent
This is news? (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
It's "hard" but.. (Score:3, Insightful)
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.)
Borg (Score:4, Interesting)
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...
Re:Borg (Score:4, Informative)
Um, I don't think you can just "blow Google up". Don't they have datacenters around the globe?
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Obviously it would take a high degree of coordination and skill but an electronic attack could take them out for awhile. It's been done before to large companies. My only point is that google is an attractive target for a great many political interests both domestically and abroad.
Re:Borg (Score:5, Funny)
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?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Or maybe the hackers in the US are smart enough to not get caught in the first place. The best hacker in the world is someone nobody's heard of. You know, as long as we're doing conspiracy theory, we might as well make it sound good.... ;)
Re: (Score:2)
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.
Because it is hard to bring down Google. Google, MS, Yahoo, Apple, and a few other sites could withstand a heavy DDoS attack even by the full force of a major botnet. On the other hand, I'm sure that even the US government's sites would fail when under that much attack. Not only that but the said websites are all rather smart and won't leave open anything for crackers to exploit.
Re:Borg (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not that difficult to script a search that checks multiple search engines to see if the same items appear. There are folks who do that. Comparing Google to other search engines is a business function these days. I don't think that Google could go too far out on a limb with modifying or restricting information without some complaints.
When you are as Big as Google, yes, there will be complaints. You can't please everyone all of the time. That said, I've not yet heard of Google outright doing evil.
Knowing the Bush administration and spy types in general, it's quite likely that there have been instances of co-operation, if not ongoing situations. The trouble is that given the size of Google and other Internet services providers it is not likely that there will be NO government co-operative instances. The thing to work at is keeping such things minimal and transparent/above board.
So far, Google has been good for the world. I'm not saying it will always be so, so it is good that people are watching them.
Parent
So.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Only 63% (Score:3, Interesting)
Only 63%? Who's the other 37%?
I would've thought more in the >90% range.
Re:Only 63% (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Google dominates that latin language set. Once you get into Asian languages other search engines start to win out but they are country by country.
Korea and China for example have their own top search engine.
Google is able to compete in all of them with market share in double digits almost everywhere but it's not de-fact.
Google is not easy to say in none-western languages unfortunately and is therefore not a 'catchphrasy' name either.
What About Choice? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Wrong again (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Results 1 - 10 of about 1,640,000 for China's moon program. (0.14 seconds)
Re:Google workforce on the extreme left (Score:4, Interesting)
It's all relative; Compared to places like Berkley or downtown San Francisco, Google is pretty moderate; Compared to the rest of the country, not so much. What else would you expect for a company from the San Francisco Bay area?
P.S. We do at least have some closet Libertarians, as evidenced by the Ron Paul talk a while back. Also, remote office locations also tend to reflect the local populace pretty well.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Selfish and smart people tend to lean towards capitalism if they have lots of money and socialism if they don't. Unselfish and smart people tend to lean towards socialism if they consider guaranteeing everyone's physical welfare more important than economic liberty, and capitalism if the other way around. And stupid people tend to lean towards whichever side's propaganda they hear most.
I think that about covers it