Google Censors Search Results

This is the beginning of a very bad trend. Google has now announced that humans will begin to subjectively alter search results. This is bad for a very many number of reasons, first and foremost is that it opens the door for censorship of a political nature.

GENERATION X - GIMME SOME TRUTH

This, of course, is not good for a flow of information for a free society. It reeks of information control such as was written in George Orwell's 1984. This means that Google will now become our own Ministry of Truth.


The Register.co.uk reports:   


Google this week admitted that its staff will pick and choose what appears in its search results. It's a historic statement - and nobody has yet grasped its significance.


Not so very long ago, Google disclaimed responsibility for its search results by explaining that these were chosen by a computer algorithm. The disclaimer lives on at Google News, where we are assured that:

The selection and placement of stories on this page were determined automatically by a computer program.

A few years ago, Google's apparently unimpeachable objectivity got some people very excited, and technology utopians began to herald Google as the conduit for a new form of democracy. Google was only too pleased to encourage this view. It explained that its algorithm "relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value. "

That Google was impartial was one of the articles of faith. For if Google was ever to be found to be applying subjective human judgment directly on the process, it would be akin to the voting machines being rigged.



It wasn't surprising, then, that when five years ago I described how a small, self-selected number of people could rig Google's search results, the reaction from the people doing the rigging was violently antagonistic. Who lifted that rock? they cried.

But what was once Googlewashing by a select few now has Google's active participation.

This is a terrible result. This means that Google will empower a few people to oversee editorial decisions as to what article get high search results and the rest? The rest head down the black hole.


Well, I guess most people will shrug their shoulders and say, "It's okay with me. I'm doing nothing wrong so I don't care. After all, we've always been at war with Eastasia."


This is a sad day in the history of information and what could be the darkest hour of the Internet and our right to freedom of speech. 


I register my protest and will stop using Google search (you'll also need to stop using Yahoo! Search engine too.) I urge you to do the same. From this very second on, I will set my default search engine page to Bing. 


But you don't need to use Bing. There are many others. Just please join us in our peaceful protest against Internet censorship by switching from Google search. If you don't protect your freedom of information and freedom of speech, no one is going to do it for you. 

Shocker! Yahoo Japan Throws in the Towel to Google Japan

By Mike in Tokyo Rogers

For so many years here in Japan, Yahoo.jp was the preferred search engine for the average Japanese person. Then, about two years ago, Google.co.jp started making serious moves into Yahoo Japan's dominance.

Last year, for the very first time, Japanese users found Google to be the search engine of choice for their needs.

Now, Yahoo Japan seems to have given up...

From the Yomiuri Newspaper:  

Yahoo Japan aims to improve the quality of its services with its recent decision to use Google Inc.'s search engine, a move that will cause the firm to rely on a rival company, according to analysts. The partnership between Yahoo Japan and Google of the United States is indicative of the fierce competition in the Internet market. The deal, announced Tuesday, means Google will dominate about 90 percent of the Internet search market in Japan. While both firms will use the same search engine, each company will provide services using its own information. "The competitive relationship will continue," Yahoo Japan said. By utilizing Google's search engine, Yahoo Japan hopes to optimize its business resources. Yahoo Inc., which owns 34.7 percent of Yahoo Japan and is its second-largest stakeholder, suspended development of its search technology and now utilizes rival Microsoft Corp.'s Bing search engine, hoping to catch up with Google--the leader in the U.S. Internet search market. What a load of "spin." Yahoo here actually admits in public that Google search engine is superior (but you and I already knew that!) when they say,  Yahoo Japan aims to improve the quality of its services with its recent decision to use Google Inc.'s search engine I'll bet this steams the buns of Yahoo Inc. in the USA. By the way, like the article says, Yahoo in the USA owns 34.7% of Yahoo Japan so you can bet that there were some heated debates about this pulling up their skirts and running for cover.  No doubt about it anymore... Google has kicked Yahoo's butt!   I have been to both Google Japan's office's and Yahoo Japan here in Tokyo. I can tell you from experience that there seems to be much more of a "buzz" at Google and I get the impression that the Google people just know that they are kicking the butt of the competition. It reminds me of the atmosphere difference between Apple and Microsoft. At Apple Japan, things are happening and people just brim with excitement. At Microsoft I get the impression of a company that is fat and resting on their laurels. It's the same at Yahoo Japan and Google Japan... With this deal, Google Japan gets 90% of the search market in Japan. Look for Yahoo to slip back to more and more of a bit player in the Japanese market over the next 5 ~ 10 years.    ---------- Keywords: Google, Yahoo, Yahoo Japan, Google Japan, marketing, Apple Japan, Internet, United States, Microsoft, Japanese, Tokyo, Marketing Japan, Mike Rogers, Mike in Tokyo Rogers, search engine,

Google Announces Google Caffeine! Amazing Search Speed and Results!

By Mike in Tokyo Rogers

Last month Google announced their newest web search index and it's called Caffeine and it is just fantastic! If you write or blog as often as you should, then you are always looking for ways to brush up what you do to give your readers information that they want as quickly as you can...

After all that's what the Internet is good at and what Google is excellent at!

Whether you are using any sort of Social Media for marketing, business or pleasure, Google's new Caffeine is just like what it is called, "A wake up jolt!"

Take heed all bloggers, video bloggers, U-Stream or Youtube users, Facebook, Mixi, Linkedin, Pick or Twitter users because when you upload any sort for information to your SNS site or on the Internet in general, Google Caffeine is tracking you and allowing the people who are looking for your information to find you quickly and easily.  

Recently, I had been wondering how it was possible when I had an article published on, say www.lewrockwell.com, that a Google search who show my article in the results within 2 hours of publishing, but that's exactly the super-high speed performance that Google Caffeine offers. It is simply incredible.

From Google's press release about Google Caffeine:

Caffeine lets us index web pages on an enormous scale. In fact, every second Caffeine processes hundreds of thousands of pages in parallel. If this were a pile of paper it would grow three miles taller every second. Caffeine takes up nearly 100 million gigabytes of storage in one database and adds new information at a rate of hundreds of thousands of gigabytes per day. You would need 625,000 of the largest iPods to store that much information; if these were stacked end-to-end they would go for more than 40 miles.

Wow! That's a fair share of information processing in the blink of an eye, I'd say.

This makes it critical for those of you who are blogging to effectively use your keywords and tags so that a search on Google using Google Caffeine can find you. It also makes it even more important for folks who are video blogging or using Youtube or U-stream to make sure that they input the correct information on the description of their videos and tag them as much as possible...

Of course, then, it also stands to reason that when you do upload a new blog or vlog, then you will announce it on you SNS network (Facebook, Mixi, Twitter, or Pick) and those, too, will be analyzed by Google Caffeine and get you even better results for your efforts.

Hats off to Google for Google Caffeine. Just how does Google keep this torrid pace of great ideas and products up?

I think Yahoo is in trouble even though Yahoo Japan is doing pretty well.

By the way, just as a side note, I spoke to George Williams on the telephone this morning and he mentioned something to me that I thought was very interesting and a sign of  the times. He said, "You know, it used to be that young people were interested in working at companies like Sony or a big record label. Not anymore. Young people today are only interested in two companies; Apple or Google."

Absolutely. And with products coming out like iPad and Google Caffeine who can blame them?

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