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scratt
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2004-08-15, 21:30

"Absolutely not. Having recently returned from 3 weeks in Europe I discovered what others already know - Google sensors negative stories about the war in Iraq from readers in America. At a time when Americans are struggling to understand the truth, this is a deplorable act.
Sheri Kirkland, Los Angels, USA"

What do people think about this? Source the BBC, UK.

Interestingly enough I just started looking at the whole share option thing on Google and 4 out of 6 negative articles about the share offering were 'unavailable'...

Am I being paranoid, or is there something wrong here...

I am off to do some anonymous browsing now to see what I can throw up..
Cheers,
(undercover)scratt

'Remember, measure life by the moments that take your breath away, not by how many breaths you take'
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Kickaha
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2004-08-15, 21:33

'censors' is the word you're looking for.

Provide the links you found unavailable, please.
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Ebby
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2004-08-15, 21:34

Yes, link please. If true, this is very disturbing.
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Kickaha
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2004-08-15, 21:37

Preferably the BBC link. Since there are two misspellings in the quote, I'm um... skeptical.

Then the terms/links you tried in Google that were 'unavailable'... which could be because they were pulled at the main server, in which case the various caching services around will be helpful.
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scratt
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2004-08-15, 21:44

Sorry yes, that was thoughtless of me... Here is the BBC link.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/talking_point/3671667.stm

I will get the links for the missing pages and try to pop them up here a bit later.
scratt

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alcimedes
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2004-08-15, 21:54

Quote:
Would you buy shares in Google?

This debate is now closed. Read your comments below.
those are generic comments. anyone can write anything. considering there's no fact checking involved with that statement, i'm going to say i'm not all ALL concerned about it.

Google is your frenemy.
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Luca
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2004-08-15, 22:02

So, it seems that Sheri Kirkland of "Los Angels" (she misspelled it) is of that opinion. Who is she? Why does she think this? Where is her evidence? It's a disturbing idea, yes, but how do I know it's not another one of those crackpot conspiracy theories?

"Having recently returned from 3 weeks in Europe I discovered what others already know - Google sensors negative stories about the war in Iraq from readers in America. At a time when Americans are struggling to understand the truth, this is a deplorable act."
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scratt
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2004-08-15, 22:07

Fair enough.
scratt
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Kickaha
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2004-08-15, 22:38

So, that quote wasn't actually part of a journalistic article, but instead just some random person's unsubstantiated opinion quote??

Er... I have to admit that rather destroys any credibility it may have had.

Google will often point to pages that the hosting server has taken down. It's not an instant-response system, it takes time to scan *the entire internet*, and between the scan and addition to the database, and when you go to find it, it may have been removed by the host. *Especially* if it is a news site that charges for archives. Google isn't censoring a bloody thing in these cases, it's just user error.
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scratt
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2004-08-15, 22:54

Agreed,

I certainly didn't intend to misperesent what was said.
I also noted the mis-spelling and was aware it was the view of just one person. Perhaps a trouble maker, perhaps genuine. I was just suprised to see it on a BBC site though. They do actually tend to print a representative cross section of comments when they do these surveys. They get 100 of thousands of replies to these surveys. This I know, so I would suggest that is not the only one like that they have recieved.

I was more interested to see that someone from the US had that comment to make about Google. It is often that people from the US who travel outside the US are suprised at the World Vview compared to what they see at home.

It is a fact that most people accept that American news in the US is not, shall we say, quite the same as that on International news programs and I feel this may also be true with some of the results you get from Google.

How do people feel about this?

I do know that Google UK, for example, by definition returns different results from the main Google site. This is to be expected but with International News... That is worrying for people in America... not for anyone else.

I have found mixed results with articles on the Google flotation.
Indeed I was actually planning to buy some, however, as I am not a US citizen I cannot. Fair enough. Rather flies in the face of a 'global company' image but I am not complaining.

I also am an advertiser with Google, both paid and a carrier so I cannot be held to be anti-Google. They are also my search engine of choice... heck Google is in the top right of my browser (Safari) and I use it upwards of 250 times a day!!! I was rather more concerned that perhaps there is something more sinister in the difference in news coverage.

Please don't think I am trying to make trouble for Google. I am actually a fan of their different style of business. I also agree wholheartedly with their efforts to stop Blue Chips make unreasonable profits from the flotation of Google. I wish they would extend that to all interested parties, not just those who have US citizenship. But I am not bitter about that either.

I just was passing on something I found interesting?



Concerning?

Have a nice day!
scratt

'Remember, measure life by the moments that take your breath away, not by how many breaths you take'
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SKMDC
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2004-08-15, 22:58

plus if she was in europe how in the hell would she know what was not getting through in america?
google's news feed is updated, what every thirty seconds?, what is the lead story about iraq now, will be 4th or 5th in line a couple of minutes later.
to censor something that's flying by at such a pace, well i don't think there is anyone capable of doing that, and any program written to do that would be haphazard.
and finally, google is where i get most of my iraq news, if they are censoring stuff the war must be more FUBAR than i thought.

"What's a Canadian farm boy to do?"
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curiousuburb
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2004-08-15, 23:09

Holy Half-cocked Batman.

Google has been asked by the US Govt to remove certain cached material since 9/11.
Nuclear materials, planning, technical, and engineering materials about sensitive infrastructure (power plants, etc) that once had online homes courtesy of departmental web pages were redacted internally. Google received official requests to pull caches and mirrors of much of this data.

GoogleWatch and other more impartial and international sources reported on this at the time.
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scratt
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2004-08-15, 23:17

Quote:
Originally Posted by superkaratemonkeydeathcar
plus if she was in europe how in the hell would she know what was not getting through in america?
google's news feed is updated, what every thirty seconds?, what is the lead story about iraq now, will be 4th or 5th in line a couple of minutes later.
to censor something that's flying by at such a pace, well i don't think there is anyone capable of doing that, and any program written to do that would be haphazard.
and finally, google is where i get most of my iraq news, if they are censoring stuff the war must be more FUBAR than i thought.
Erm!?! Let me think....

Phone, email to friends, relatives in the states.... any number of international instantaneous communications methods!

Anonymous surfing springs to mind.... Would you like some more examples...

To clarify the above point.. I run a proxy server on my 17" and on some of my own sites. Why? Quite often when you update a web site your ISP is still caching the last version and when you check the update you see the old version.... I have spent many a few minutes scratching my head because of this... If you then proxy surf the same site from either your own machine, or via your own web server you get the real, uncached updated version.

You can also anonomously surf using this method... That way it is possible to mask where you are surfing from. Many sites give localised information based on where you are... If you are anonomously surfing they don't know and give you generic or default results...

With regards to you getting most of your news from.... That IS MY POINT!!!!

'Remember, measure life by the moments that take your breath away, not by how many breaths you take'
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Kickaha
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2004-08-15, 23:19

Yeah, um, GoogleWatch is a crank site. It's a guy who was angry that his for-pay site was not ranked highly enough on Google, so he started making up crap. Not exactly a credible source for anything.

That being said... I'm not surprised. Google gets requests to removed cached material all the time... some requesting sources just have the weight of authority behind them. The caches will clear out with time, but speeding up that process isn't necessarily a bad thing.

This is hardly Google censoring anything... if the publishing source requests sensitive material to be removed from their caches, after removing it from the web, I don't see that as a bad thing. It was their information in the first place after all. *shrug*

Censoring would be Google not allowing you to see pages that *DO* exist.
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alcimedes
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2004-08-16, 03:04

besides which, this person was claiming that google was censoring news, which i find highly unlikely. considering that MS is just starting their own news search engine, having google return partial results would have been great news for them to post. yet i haven't seen this subject brought up anywhere but some crackpot's comments.

there are enough people going after google, that these actions would be brought to the forefront with plenty of fanfare by their competitors.

Google is your frenemy.
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I tend to interpret things in the way that's most hilarious to me
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Moogs
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2004-08-16, 08:38

If the original story doesn't bug you, maybe this will?

Quote:
WASHINGTON, Aug. 15 - The Federal Bureau of Investigation has been questioning political demonstrators across the country, and in rare cases even subpoenaing them (emphasis mine), in an aggressive effort to forestall what officials say could be violent and disruptive protests at the Republican National Convention in New York.

F.B.I. officials are urging agents to canvass their communities for information about planned disruptions aimed at the convention and other coming political events, and they say they have developed a list of people who they think may have information about possible violence. They say the inquiries, which began last month before the Democratic convention in Boston, are focused solely on possible crimes, not on dissent, at major political events.

But some people contacted by the F.B.I. say they are mystified by the bureau's interest and felt harassed by questions about their political plans.

"The message I took from it," said Sarah Bardwell, 21, an intern at a Denver antiwar group who was visited by six investigators a few weeks ago, "was that they were trying to intimidate us into not going to any protests and to let us know that, 'hey, we're watching you.' ''

The unusual initiative comes after the Justice Department, in a previously undisclosed legal opinion, gave its blessing to controversial tactics used last year by the F.B.I in urging local police departments to report suspicious activity at political and antiwar demonstrations to counterterrorism squads. The F.B.I. bulletins that relayed the request for help detailed tactics used by demonstrators - everything from violent resistance to Internet fund-raising and recruitment

Yah, I'm sure there is no political motivation behind this at all. That's why everywhere Bush goes demonstrators are kept a mile or more away from him and cordoned off into little "protest areas". This whole situation is very dangerous and if citizens aren't a little alarmed by it, they're going to keeping eating away at our ability to demonstrate where we want, when we want, and in general to say what we want how we want.

Little bit of freedom here, little bit there. Nothing to be concerned about, right? They're just trying to protect us remember. Always trying to protect us.



America, can you say "Bah-h-h-h-h"?

...into the light of a dark black night.
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alcimedes
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2004-08-16, 08:49

moogs, interesting topic, but offtopic for this thread.

you might also want to look at the Dems. on this one as well. iirc, they've got their own "protest" areas away from the actual event. it's not a one way street. but, this has nothing to do with google news, so i'll stop.

Google is your frenemy.
Caveat Emptor - Latin for tough titty
I tend to interpret things in the way that's most hilarious to me
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Moogs
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2004-08-16, 08:53

Sorry. I know it's a little OT but there is a direct link between the two stories (political censorship). And I know the Democrats are capable of doing this stuff too, especially post-911... but let's face it, the Patriot Act and the almost limitless flexibility it gives to the FBI and local law enforcement in watching "dangerous people" is being abused.

Power and corruption, absolute power and all that....

...into the light of a dark black night.
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billybobsky
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2004-08-16, 08:55

do you really search for news info on google?

thats all i have to say about that...
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alcimedes
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2004-08-16, 09:12

Quote:
Originally Posted by billybobsky
do you really search for news info on google?

thats all i have to say about that...
actually, yes. i get all my news from http://news.google.com/

excellent place to get good news about what's going on in the world.
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scratt
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2004-08-16, 09:34

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curiousuburb
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2004-08-16, 19:59

There were also reports at the time of Bush's Thanksgiving Day Iraq trip that soldiers were required to fill out forms detailing their political orientation and explicit support for Bush or they were excluded from the ceremony and schlepped to another event outdoors.

Passing the political loyalty test seems to be more important than service to the country to some.
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Crusader
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2004-08-16, 23:38

I like Google News, it informs me... moreso than any other source. If I want an international viewpoint I use BBC and that one International Newsfirst channel.
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