Google: We won't give into tyranny oh just kidding

[Pengwuino]

http://news.moneycentral.msn.com/ticker/article.asp?Feed=AP&Date=20060124&ID=5444052&Symbol=US:GOOG

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Online search engine leader Google Inc. has agreed to censor its results in China, adhering to the country's free-speech restrictions in return for better access in the Internet's fastest growing market.

This of course, within a week of denying the US Government's request for a weeks worth of search results (and not who made those searches).

From the company that would "do no evil": Business as usual...

 

[Moonbear]

This of course, within a week of denying the US Government's request for a weeks worth of search results (and not who made those searches).

I thought they were initially asking for more than just a week's worth of results...I thought that was the compromise they were trying to reach. Anyway, do you really think they refused on an ethical basis? I just think whoever asked for those results had absolutely no grasp of the amount of data they were requesting...it would have probably cost quite a bit to provide what they were asking for, not to mention the time to do it. Though, personally, I would have gotten a good laugh if they had granted the government's request...on hardcopies only. If the government wants to know what's available online, let them google it themselves. :rofl:

 

[mattmns]

Unless the govt is going to start spending taxes on helping me find porn, then I see no need for them to have those numbers

 

[Pengwuino]

I thought they were initially asking for more than just a week's worth of results...I thought that was the compromise they were trying to reach. Anyway, do you really think they refused on an ethical basis? I just think whoever asked for those results had absolutely no grasp of the amount of data they were requesting...it would have probably cost quite a bit to provide what they were asking for, not to mention the time to do it. Though, personally, I would have gotten a good laugh if they had granted the government's request...on hardcopies only. If the government wants to know what's available online, let them google it themselves. :rofl:

I think they were requesting what would have turned out to be 10,000,000 keywords (or that's way off and I am stuck on 10 million from the last thread i did). Google's AdSense makes sense of the search results everyday so I don't see the problem

 

[Moonbear]

Unless the govt is going to start spending taxes on helping me find porn, then I see no need for them to have those numbers

Hee hee. I see it as a collossal waste of money. Even if some whopping high number of google searches resulted in finding links to porn, what would it mean? They have no way to know the age of the person doing the search or if they were intentionally looking for it, or cared that they found it. I think the Congressmen just want to know if there are any free sites they've been missing out on. I wonder who would volunteer to check the validity of all the URLs? I'm sure some young intern will be needed to assist.

 

[Pengwuino]

Hee hee. I see it as a collossal waste of money. Even if some whopping high number of google searches resulted in finding links to porn, what would it mean? They have no way to know the age of the person doing the search or if they were intentionally looking for it, or cared that they found it. I think the Congressmen just want to know if there are any free sites they've been missing out on. I wonder who would volunteer to check the validity of all the URLs? I'm sure some young intern will be needed to assist.

They were searching for child pornography websites... which are illegal... which means once they find it, they get shut down and hopefully arrested.

 

[Moonbear]

I think they were requesting what would have turned out to be 10,000,000 keywords (or that's way off and I am stuck on 10 million from the last thread i did). Google's AdSense makes sense of the search results everyday so I don't see the problem

My understanding of it, which could be wrong, because it didn't register in my mind as a big enough deal (other than as a waste of government time, money and resources for something so pointless) to go digging into it to verify what I'd heard elsewhere, is that originally, there was no limit on the number of searches...it was something ridiculous, like everything in their databases (it came across sounding like they were almost expecting Google to download the internet for them). They were able to negotiate with Yahoo I think to provide something like 1 million (or maybe your 10 million figure is right) randomly selected search results. MSN supposedly complied, but wouldn't give details of what they agreed to provide. Google has another motivation to refuse...they know people are worried about privacy issues with gmail, so it's in their best interest to sound like they care about these things. It looks better to their shareholders if their hand was forced after they resisted than if they just immediately gave into the request. Like I said, I don't really believe it had anything to do with any sort of ethics.

 

[Moonbear]

They were searching for child pornography websites... which are illegal... which means once they find it, they get shut down and hopefully arrested.

I thought it was just pornography in general. :grumpy: Now I'm going to have to look into this.

 

[Evo]

They were searching for child pornography websites... which are illegal... which means once they find it, they get shut down and hopefully arrested.

They can't just do a google search?

 

[Pengwuino]

Every search engine outside of google already agreed to comply with the US government but I'm not sure on what terms for each. The US Government wanted 1 weeks worth, I think a lot of false reports came out saying the Gov wanted every result pulled up (which is very possible with google's software).

The REAL reason google doesn't want to do it is because they are concerned their searching methodology and software secrets would be compromised by the government's probe.

 

[Pengwuino]

They can't just do a google search?

haha

"All google's results"

*I'm feeling lucky*

 

[Moonbear]

Here...

The move is part of a government effort to revive an Internet child protection law struck down two years ago by the U.S. Supreme Court. The law was meant to punish online pornography sites that make their content accessible to minors. The government contends it needs the Google data to determine how often pornography shows up in online searches.

In court papers filed in U.S. District Court in San Jose, Justice Department lawyers revealed that Google has refused to comply with a subpoena issued last year for the records, which include a request for 1 million random Web addresses and records of all Google searches from any one-week period.

The Mountain View-based search and advertising giant opposes releasing the information on a variety of grounds, saying it would violate the privacy rights of its users and reveal company trade secrets, according to court documents. http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/13657386.htm

How does knowing how many times pornography comes up in online searches tell you anything about whether those sites make their content accessible to minors?

It also seems another part of the issue is that the information the government requested also would have involved revealing how google's search engine works, which they fear would reveal trade secrets.

And other articles on the same issue:
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=1523227&CMP=OTC-RSSFeeds0312

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dy...11903331_2.html?nav=rss_technology/techpolicy

It's not about child pornography, it's about the government trying to limit availability of any pornography on the internet out of fear of children seeing it. It sounds like if what they had been asking for was information specifically about child pornography for the purpose of evidence in filing criminal charges, Google would have agreed to comply.

 

[Pengwuino]

I guess I'm becoming old and losing my reading comprehension. I swore i saw child pornography in some article I read but I guess not...

Hell why don't they do that too, I'm sure there's a lot out there!

 

[TheStatutoryApe]

http://www.searchengineguide.com/laycock/006603.html
Story on Google not wanting to give into the Department of Justice on the subpoena issue.
It states that it's about child access to porn not access to child porn. And it says nothing what so ever about penguin porn unfortunately.
Oh and it cites the number at one million random URLs on top of the one week worth of searches.


This reminds me of Three Dead Trolls In A Baggie and the kid who didn't want his parents to get on the internet.
"I have a project planned to paint the garage and I was wondering if I could use latex paint on stucco. I was figuring I would search on the internet for oh... I don't know.. latex bondage maybe?"

 

[TheStatutoryApe]

Damn I'm slow.

 

[Moonbear]

If they were trying to crack down on child pornography, I wouldn't object at all. This is more of the government trying to pass a law because there are too many parents who don't know how to supervise their children and then cry because the kid saw something they shouldn't have.

Though, maybe Google should finally comply and submit this week's list of search results where there are probably LOTS of results with the word pornography and government in them; obviously we should ban government. :rofl: (I.e., all the news stories about this.)

 

[Pengwuino]

If they were trying to crack down on child pornography, I wouldn't object at all. This is more of the government trying to pass a law because there are too many parents who don't know how to supervise their children and then cry because the kid saw something they shouldn't have.

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: when you put it that way, maybe I am very for googles moves :)

 

[Evo]

For those of you that don't know how Google works, here's a link.

http://www.google.com/technology/pigeonrank.html

 

[rachmaninoff]

Results 1 - 10 of about 8,730,000,000 for the. (0.05 seconds)

...

 

[Moonbear]

:rofl: Yes, Rach, people like you are the reason the week's worth of search results would be a complete waste of effort, and an insane amount of data to fish through.

 

[Pengwuino]

Wait a second, what do you think AdSense does though Moonbear? AdSense does it on a continual basis. It logs every single search result... they have what, 15,000 servers?

 

[Moonbear]

Wait a second, what do you think AdSense does though Moonbear? AdSense does it on a continual basis. It logs every single search result... they have what, 15,000 servers?

Now, why would they want to copy all of those when they aren't going to get paid for the copies? Have I said Google isn't capable of providing the data? And if they provided it, then what? The government spends our tax money paying a team of $400/hour lawyers to read through it all just to come to the conclusion that there's a lot of porn on the internet?

 

[scott1]

For those of you that don't know how Google works, here's a link.

http://www.google.com/technology/pigeonrank.html

Page and Brin reasoned that low cost pigeon clusters (PCs) could be used to compute the relative value of web pages faster than human editors or machine-based algorithms

PigeonRank's success relies primarily on the superior trainability of the domestic pigeon (Columba livia) and its unique capacity to recognize objects regardless of spatial orientation

incentives, pigeons could be trained to execute complex tasks such as playing ping pong, piloting bombs or revising the Abatements, Credits and Refunds section of the national tax code.

Among the positions in which pigeons have served capably are replacement air traffic controllers, butterfly ballot counters and pro football referees during the "no-instant replay" years.

Avian flu is caused by avian influenza viruses, which occur naturally among birds.

http://www.cdc.gov/flu/avian/
I should of know.Birds are trying to take the world.Google is actually a company of gentically modifed intellgent birds that use there pigonsranks system to serectally transport pigons all of the world by making humans think the birds are tring to find stuff on the internet for them.While the birds are finding there getting intellgence on humans.Then Google(a.k.a the Gobal Organztion of the Great land
of Emu's) comes up super virus we call the Avian bird flu.They created it bye using chickens(Chickens or the losers of tbe aves class) so that when humans attempted to create a vaccine they would do nothing to the virus since it is only catigous by birds.They created in china so that people there won't able to treat will and they will be attack a large fraction of the human population to.But the chinese offical able to take there links/transportion in china but china didn't learn that google was incharge of it.So Google expanded egine in china and cooperted with them so that china won't suspect anything.

 

[TheStatutoryApe]

http://www.cdc.gov/flu/avian/
I should of know.Birds are trying to take the world.Google is actually a company of gentically modifed intellgent birds that use there pigonsranks system to serectally transport pigons all of the world by making humans think the birds are tring to find stuff on the internet for them.While the birds are finding there getting intellgence on humans.Then Google(a.k.a the Gobal Organztion of the Great land
of Emu's) comes up super virus we call the Avian bird flu.They created it bye using chickens(Chickens or the losers of tbe aves class) so that when humans attempted to create a vaccine they would do nothing to the virus since it is only catigous by birds.They created in china so that people there won't able to treat will and they will be attack a large fraction of the human population to.But the chinese offical able to take there links/transportion in china but china didn't learn that google was incharge of it.So Google expanded egine in china and cooperted with them so that china won't suspect anything.

http://www.gunsanddope.com/
They're in politics aswell.