Talk:Criticism of Google/Archive 1

Censorship --> Multinational corporation
Let's take this censorship paragraph and move it from the realm of controversy to the realm of fact. Suggested replacement:

Multinational Corporation
Google is a multinational corporation, having offices in over a dozen countries. In order to comply with the varying laws of these countries, several versions of Google restrict very specific keyword searches. According to French and German law, for example, ethnocentrism and historical revisionism are illegal. Google complies with these laws by banning keyword searches related to these terms. China, whose human rights record has been widely criticized by the international community, has in the past restricted citizen access to popular search engines such as Altavista, Yahoo, and Google. This complete ban is currently lifted, however the government remains proactive in filtering internet content.

--Alterego 00:51, Mar 4, 2005 (UTC)

EDIT: I've been doing research and there is considerable evidence that Google plays no part in China's filtering. Not only is there a list, but some of the more technical details are known. Considering Sergey's quote,"We didn't make changes to our servers." , and the lack of evidence otherwise, it seems appropriate to mention in the article on China that the government firewall filters ALL internet traffic. As to the mention in the article on Google, for historical purposes it is informative to write that Google has been banned in the past, alongside other popular search engines. But there is no evidence Google is filtering keywords in China. --Alterego 02:28, Mar 4, 2005 (UTC)


 * As there has been no objection i will be making this replacement soon --Alterego 23:29, Mar 6, 2005 (UTC)


 * Following blocks of text have been replaced in favor of above as per the discussion that didn't occur.


 * In 2002, news reports surfaced that the Google search engine had been banned in mainland China. In 2004 further reports surfaced that China was blocking access to Google's News feature and allegedly forcing Chinese users to China's version of Google News which allegedly does not contain critical reports.     Another issue China and other countries have with Google is over Google's web cache feature which provides a cached version of most websites, this allows Chinese and other web users a method for circumventing a ban on accessing any other website on the internet.


 * Sites advocating ethnocentrism or historical revisionism have been banned for years in the French and German versions of Google as such speech is censored in those countries. The Chinese version of Google restricts searches on tens of thousands of keywords, acting as a technological partner to the content control policies of the Chinese central government . Other potentially controversial sites such as pornography have been restricted by a "SafeSearch" filter which can be turned off.


 * When Google's image search feature did not return any results on the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal for several months in 2004, some Internet users theorized that this was possibly censorship. A Google representative responded, "Google's image index is not updated as frequently as it should be" . The images started appearing in Google's image index in November 2004.


 * I don't understand why, after all of our previous discussions, Abu Ghraib is still in the Google article. It clearly didn't happen, is a conspiracy theory touted by google-watch.org (see google-watch-watch.org), and therefore has nothing to do with Google --Alterego 04:10, Mar 9, 2005 (UTC)

Google and AFP
I just wrote a section on a new lawsuit filed against Google. It's on the Agence France Presse page. Should I:
 * copy-paste it here?
 * rewrite it? (I don't want to do that)
 * put it on a new page and have both AFP and Google link to it?
 * something else?

Thanks, Dave 04:51, Mar 21, 2005 (UTC)
 * Copy it over with a minor rewrite to focus more on google  and get rid of acronyms which haven't been used yet (AFP). This doesn't deserve it's own page. BrokenSegue 04:58, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I'm new here, so I don't know the ropes yet.  It's considered okay to reuse content like that? Dave 05:06, Mar 21, 2005 (UTC)
 * THe same material inevitably must appear in more than one place. It's best if the languasge isn't identical and that they emphasize the relevance to the article it is in, but that text you add will probably be change and spliced later on anyways. In most cases you shouldn't need to ask like this. Be bold and if you mess up someone will fix it and inform you that you made a mistake.
 * Thanks. Dave 05:40, Mar 21, 2005 (UTC)

Democracy - China Issue
Please weigh in on the continued deletion of any reference in the article to the controversy with China.

This has been deleted: "In the summer of 2005 Google's name has been associated with commercial contracts between the Government of China, Microsoft and CISCO which block access to websites using words like "democracy." Google has been involved with the removal of specific sites that are blocked in China from their Chinese news portal. AFP, the French news agency reported that Microsoft, Yahoo!, and Google have all agreed to cooperate in censoring the Internet from their China based sites by filtering out content objectionable to the Chinese government. The list of forbidden words includes "democracy," "freedom," "human rights," and "Taiwan independence."
 * It hasn't been deleted, just moved down the section. It can be seen here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google#Multinational_corporation Ablaze 09:16, 27 July 2005 (UTC)


 * Glad you realize it hasn't been deleted :). It might be a good idea also to add sources to the information as well - e.g. .  --Mintchocicecream 09:50, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

thanks I figured it went somewheres. http://www.thenewamerican.com/artman/publish/article_1905.shtml

"Anti-competitive practices"
User 80.2.248.156 has added the following section: "Google removed links to multimap maps when they launched google maps. This is probably because both google maps and multimap have satellite imagery. Google also displays suggested alternatives to search terms halfway down the page. Many of these are not corrections of the spellings but suggestions of particular businesses. These are generally suppliers of the product googled."

This paragraph is very unclear, and provides no citations of sources - I have no idea what "multimap maps" are, nor have I ever seen Google suggest "alternatives to search terms halfway down the page". If anyone has any objections to removing this section, or plans on improving it, please post here. I plan on removing this paragraph in the next few days. --bbatsell |  &laquo; give me a ring &raquo;  22:39, 31 October 2005 (UTC)


 * I have removed the paragraph. --bbatsell  |  &laquo; give me a ring &raquo;  17:46, 1 November 2005 (UTC)


 * I'm betting that "multimap maps" are links to other map sites when you search for an address - except those link to "competators" are still there!  Actually, there is a site named Multimap, but it seems to be primarily a UK site and slowly falling in usage.
 * You can see the suggestions to alternatives halfway by searching for, as an example, SSD ("Social Security Disability") - but that example doesn't have any "suggestions of particular businesses". I agree that the paragraph seems to be original research and inaccurate, and should be removed. AySz88 ^ -  ^

Offensive Search Results
"As of November 2005, that article remains the #1 link, with Jew Watch at #2." - This is not true, if you search "Jew" for google now it will show "Jew Watch" as the first result. The article should instead say that due to constant fluctuations in traffic and the search algorithm used by Google, one cannot predict what the search results will be.--Sampi 03:14, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

Google Canada currently lists the wikipedia article as the first hit, but Google.com lists Jew Watch as #1, as of 1:36 am Mountain Time, Edmonton, Alberta, January 4. --Bonzo the Moon Man

gmail
I know that gmail stores all you're e-mail, but should it really be under privacy issues? If google reads your mail then say so but if they don't remove gmail form the list


 * The concern over gmail privacy issues is more about the ambiguity in the privacy policies. The emails are "read" by the computers and stored.  Without going into the whole privacy policy itself, here's a snippet from the Gmail privacy page.


 * "Google's computers process the information in your messages for various purposes, including formatting and displaying the information to you, delivering advertisements and related links, preventing unsolicited bulk email (spam), backing up your messages, and other purposes relating to offering you Gmail."


 * In addition to that the storage policies for the emails themselves are not quite clear leaving plenty of room for the contents of emails to be stored indefinitely even after actively deleting them. More on that from the page:


 * "You may organize or delete your messages through your Gmail account or terminate your account through the Google Account section of Gmail settings. Such deletions or terminations will take immediate effect in your account view. Residual copies of deleted messages and accounts may take up to 60 days to be deleted from our active servers and may remain in our offline backup systems."

ellipsis
"Many argue, that access technologies as Microsoft Passport, suggestion services like the ones employed in ... are far more invasive to users' privacy than those employed by Google."

This sentence has been in the article since its creation over a year ago. What's supposed to go where the ellipsis is? —Slicing (talk) 02:11, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

Censorship in China
I think the Chinese Government DOES have the right to censor the Chinese Google, but, cmon. The Chinese arn't stupid, they can just use other countries Google search, translate the chinese text, etc. If ANY Chinese need help with it, contact me. Son Goku22
 * I doubt your average Chinese person can use another Google site, actually. They have something (facetiously) known as the Great Firewall in the way. PeteVerdon 00:46, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

I've heard that they can, actually. The government tried blocking Google international and then unblocked it again. -- ran (talk) 03:38, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

Some changes
Re: On February 5, 2006, google.com was banned by China Telecom, users could only visit google.cn, but unfortuntely, the block was lifted after several hours.

I reworded this. I left it in since I couldn't adequately disprove it. --^pirate 02:53, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

Seriously, what B I A S
The word "unfortunately" is bias every step of the way Macwiki 22:37, 14 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Also, I removed  'The website for the boycott is' from the Chinese Censorship category; it was too much of an advertisement.

Macwiki 23:09, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

Current Google France / Google China image search comparison is not a well-designed one
Compare an image search for Hiroshima:



And an image search for 広島 (Hiroshima, in Japanese);



Why is there a difference? Because in the West, the word "Hiroshima" is mostly used to refer to an atomic bombing, not a city. But this is clearly not the case in Japan.

Similarly, "Tiananmen" in the West is used to refer to a particular event in 1989. But this is not the case in China. Tiananmen is timeless, like the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. So many events have happened at Tiananmen over the past century that it is not linked to any particular one.

In other words, even if Google China were completely uncensored, I doubt that searching for "Tiananmen" would turn up a page full of tanks. Here's a close approximation: searching for 天安门 (Tiananmen, in Chinese) on uncensored Google international:



When Chinese people want to refer to the particular event in 1989, they say 六四 (six-four). It's like "nine-eleven" -- people know what it means.

So I think a far better comparison would be to contrast searching for 六四 ("six-four") on Google uncensored:

9180 results (warning... some images may be disturbing)

and 六四 ("six-four") on Google censored:

only 40 results!

However, since the uncensored result for "six-four" is a bit graphic, I'll try to look for another comparison, and replace the current pic if there are no objections.

-- ran (talk) 03:45, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

Photo Request
This article needs a picture of P & B's first storage unit, on display in the basement of the Stanford CS building... Gazpacho 04:03, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Alex
Someone deleted alex views, and did not replace them. NPOV demands all views to the represented. --Striver 14:51, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Where in WP:NPOV does it state that all views must be represented? --mtz206 15:48, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
 * All significant minority views. He does represent a significant minority. --Striver 16:03, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
 * One person does not make a "significant minority," and not all minority positions deserve equal mention. The policy concerning undue weight states, in part, "To give undue weight to a significant-minority view, or to include a tiny-minority view, might be misleading as to the shape of the dispute. Wikipedia aims to present competing views in proportion to their representation among experts on the subject, or among the concerned parties." We must be careful so as to not provide just one person's view (Alex Jones or any other single person) undue weight.--mtz206 19:27, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

This user does this on every article to try and promote the views of Alex Jones. He gets into revert wars and waits for the other side to get tired enough to stop and then puts his version in. He has been trying to do the same thing at Internet, Internet2, Slobodan Milosevic, Google, and this page.--Jersey Devil 17:48, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Wordwide Ban
Removing Worldwide Ban mention since it has nothing to do with privacy issues. --mtz206 15:49, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Reworded the inclusion of the worldwide ban, as it is legitimate for this article - concerning googles original caving in to the Chinese government over Spacewar.com and then with public pressure reversing their decision over this. It shows the acitivity of that company to placate governments through their "Do no evil" philosophy. I am open for discussion on this however, as I see the point about it being strictly a privacy issue, but I think it is related. What do others think? --Northmeister 00:09, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
 * This article is about "Google and privacy issues." Not "related" concerns. Discussion of the banning of a site, working with the Chinese government, and the "Don't be evil" motto should be included (if those editors agree) in the "Criticisms and controversies" section of the History of Google page. (I am reverting your contribution). --mtz206 00:29, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
 * I would further suggest finding more mainstream/reliable citations for those entries if you want other editors to accept them. --mtz206 00:32, 22 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Although I disagree with the assumption of your last statement (about sources reliability here as Alex Jones does his research well), I will agree with you on the premise that it would belong on the Google page more so (or on its own page - Striver this is a hint for you if you wish to include my rework of your original edit) especially after re-reading the article with its inclusion. My suggestion to Striver is that he take my edit or redo it to his liking and put it on the Google page as you suggest.  I think a page titled "Google and Censorship issues" would be a worthy place for the text as well.  Thanks folks. --Northmeister 02:53, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
 * The article for Alex Jones notes that "[h]is journalism is often sensationalistic and lacking proper documentation," which would (IMO) disqualify it from being a reliable source. --mtz206 03:03, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

rewrite of DOJ matter
I've re-written the section on the DOJ matter, renaming it "Legal disputes" to better reflect the content. I provided citations, and noted the recent ruling by the court. Further, Scroogle's opinion of the matter isn't entirely relevant for an encyclopedic article. --mtz206 16:21, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Charlie Sheen story censorship
There is no way of substantiating a claim that Google purposely neglected to index a certain page for any given time period (especially if only only 3 days). Please do not repost any reference to this unsubstantiated claim. --mtz206 02:57, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Sure there is, i gave you a article about it, he talked about it on his radio show and he also gives a print screen of it. Are you claiming he is lying? If you are claiming the article is giving false information, could you please prove evidence for that? Remeber that we are talking about the same source that made the Charlie Sheen story to begin with, the story has been publized in CNN, so if the source is credible enough for CNN, its credible enough for Wikipedia. --Striver 03:06, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Sir, you are making a claim that is unprovable: that Google didn't do something on purpose. Unless you have documentation from within Google that they purposely did not index that story for 3 days, this can be easily explainable due to the amount of time it takes a search engine to update their index of websites. just becuase Alex Jones talked about it on his website doesn't make it true, let alone notable for encyclopedic mention. This reference should be deleted, and should not be reverted. --mtz206 03:11, 24 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Thank you for anwering me. I wont go into a detailed fight about this, ill just reword it. Peace.--Striver 03:18, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
 * This argument is simply wrong: "Alex argues that since their indexing service is automated and usualy indexes his site withing 12-24 houres, it would demand a countious effort to hinder the indexing service from including any internet site about the issue for a full three days. Alex also argues that the indexing of those articles happening on the same time he was complaining about it on his radio show can not be taken as a coincidence." Look here; it can take 11.6 days to crawl 10B pages - 3 days to index this article is not evidence of censorhip. --mtz206 03:36, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Ok, then alex is wrong. Or maybe they take 10 days to fix some small website. Not my problem. Its still his view, its a critique by a notable person, and its need to be represented. After i rewrote it, the text no longer says that Alex is right, only that Alex said that. Further, Alex is not complaining about only his site not being indexed, hi is complaining that no site nowhere was indexed, and all of the sudden, 17.000 sites are indexed. --Striver 03:43, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
 * I'm sorry, but just because Alex Jones says something doesn't make it of encyclopedic value. Wikipedia is not a soapbox nor an indiscriminate collection of information.--mtz206 03:49, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Are you saying Alex is non-notable? His interview on the very topic he claimed was censured is all over mainstream news, CNN, NYT and so on... If his work is notable enough for CNN, then his work is notable enough for wikipedia.--Striver 03:56, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Rampant speculation about matters on which he is grossly unqualified is not notable. Is his "Vincente Fox can morph into a green devil" notable? No, it's bunk. Feel free to put it up on Alex Jones's page. It's a fine source for what he believe. It's not a fine source for commentary on how Google works. --Mmx1 04:13, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Ok, I just reverted this junk. This makes no sense. To me, it sounds like Alex is complaining via his website and it was posted to wikipedia to add to his soapbox. I also cannot find any reference to this on CNN or the NYT, or any other legitimate site other than somebody's blog (and most notably Alex's own site anyway). Not only that, but the grammar and spelling errors in the article post were absolutely atrocious. Dr. Cash 04:41, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

What someone says on a self-published source is not an encyclopedic source, as directly spelled out in policy. Mr. Jones is in no way an expert on Google (nor a reliable source for pretty much anything). Not everything that someone says or does is notable, regardless of the person's notability. Even less so when that person is an utter loon (and/or makes his living making a tongue-in-cheek radio show and selling books in the same style.)

As to google refresh rate, Mr. Jones is being as clueless as usual. Google for frequently changing sites, then hit the "Show Google's cache of zzz" link. If anything, three days is less than the refresh rate of many high profile sites. At the moment slashdot.org is five days old, www.cnn.com is two days old, Wikipedia current events is eight days old. OMG, more than a week! They are trying to censor Wikipedia! Help, help, I'm being repressed! :-) Weregerbil 13:59, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Worldwide Ban?
I can't find any evidence within the refernces for this mention that such a ban actually occured. Are there any secondary sources that confirm these claims? Further, these references seem less than reliable due to some glaringly incorrect statements about Google, such as "Google Inc. is mostly operated by robotic systems agents with a brick wall between its human customers and human workers." Not really sure what that is referring to. Does anyone else think this entire section should be deleted? --mtz206 03:06, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Try this search string: --Striver 03:14, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Blogs republishing the spacewar.com content aren't quite the secondary sources we're looking for. Any hits on LexisNexis? GoogleNews? --mtz206 14:05, 24 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Search strings on google are not repudable sources, either. Based on some comments seen above in the Charlie Sheen incident, I'd say I say it's a good bet that Alex Jones's blog doesn't quite match up. I'd suggest for now, that we leave what's there for a few more days while we look for a reasonable source. If we can't find one, we delete this as non-notable. Dr. Cash 19:15, 24 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Alex Jones site is not a blog, its a news site. Just take a look at it, he is providing daily news, from a non-mainstream perspective. Not liking that perspektive is not a valid reason to delete his views, he is plenty of notable, just think about a hollywood actor choose to give a interview with thim, risking his career on the run, and the event being covered on CNN.--Striver 00:22, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
 * There has been a lot of mention of how CNN is covering this (as well as the Charlie Sheen issue), yet no links have been provided to a CNN article on this issue? Did they really cover it (other than Alex Jones saying they did)? If so, provide a link to CNN's story. --mtz206 01:06, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
 * There are a lot of blogs on the net that "look" like repudable news sites, that really aren't. They're just some site allowing some nutcase to spread ultra-right or ultra-left wing views to anyone that will read. But this does not make it notable for inclusion in an encyclopedia. I agree with Mtz206 that the article needs a reference to CNN here. If you mentioned in the article previously that this issue was mentioned by CNN, you certainly ought to be able to provide a link, unless, of course, you're lying (or Alex is pulling crap out of his butt again).Dr. Cash 06:06, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

here us the entire CNN clip with Charlie prisonplanet.com/articles/march2006/230306Sheen_CNN.htm].--Striver 13:51, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
 * we are discussing the accuracy of the claim of a "wordwide ban" of spacewar.com by Google, not Charlie Sheen's views on 9/11. Are there independent and reliable reports that Google did ban this site? --mtz206 14:13, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

"Rappoport Confirms Google Censorship Of Sheen Story" www.prisonplanet.com/articles/march2006/250306confirmsgoogle.htm] --Striver 23:47, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

who's this rappoport guy? Looks like the guy that wrote the story.--Mmx1 02:23, 26 March 2006 (UTC)


 * ''Jon Rappoport has worked as a free-lance investigative reporter for 20 years.


 * ''He has written articles on politics, health, media, culture and art for LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, Village Voice, Nexus, CBS Healthwatch, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe.


 * ''In 1982, the LA Weekly submitted his name for a Pulitzer prize, for his interview with the president of El Salvador University, where the military had taken over the campus.


 * ''Jon has hosted, produced, and written radio programs and segments in Los Angeles and Las Vegas (KPFK, KLAV). He has appeared as a guest on over 200 radio and television programs, including ABC's Nightline, Tony Brown's Journal (PBS), and Hard Copy.


 * ''In 1994, Jon ran for a seat in the US Congress from the 29th district in Los Angeles. After six months of campaigning, on a very small budget, he garnered 20 percent of the vote running against an incumbent who had occupied his seat for 20 years.

Now you know. Not that it matter, i mean, his a conspiracy theorist, so it would'nd mater even if he had won a nobel peace price, you would just argue that he has no university degree in software comoputing and hence is not qualify to make sence of what his eyes saw.--Striver 12:56, 26 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Comment - Why does this absolute non-event even get a mention in the article? We have a mention of the Spacewar banning which was covered in almost zero generalist news sources, backed up by spurious unbacked claims of Chinese pressure.  Whereas the widely reported pagerank killing of BMW was covered in pretty much every major news source and not even mentioned here.  But then again, that probably didn't strike a nerve with the conspiracy theorists. - Hahnchen 18:13, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Cleanup Tag
I just added a cleanup tag to this article. The article really doesn't follow any coherent sense and just seems to be a conglomeration of various facts. Dr. Cash 06:41, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree. I'm wondering if it would be best to create a separate and more comprehensive article on "criticism & controversies" relating to Google, merging this article with the subsection currently (and I think erroneously) in the History of Google article. Just a thought... --mtz206 13:38, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Criticism and discussion
This following information under that heading needs some References I have looked on http://www.google.com/privacy.html and http://www.google.com/privacypolicy.html and nothing is mentioned. Include some articles such as http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/2786761.stm or http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/11/google_and_priv.html

Criticisms and discussion
Beyond what the basic criticism of Google's retention/collection policy and what Google themselves state in their official TOS, everything else was a bunch of weasel words and POV:


 * Critics, however, argue that user preferences can be stored in non-unique cookies, and that user statistics can be retrieved without referring to individual user statistics.

"Critics"? What critics?


 * The collection of information of users is not unique to Google. Other search providers like Yahoo! and MSN, as well as large shopping and auction sites (Amazon, Ebay) apply similar policies. Many argue, that access technologies as Microsoft Passport, suggestion services like the ones employed in ... are far more invasive to users' privacy than those employed by Google. This in turn is countered by mentioning of the ubiquity of Google's search engine, AdSense/AdWords technology and other services giving it a unique wealth of information.

It's not difficult to see someone desperately trying to make the point that Goggle "sucks less" but it needs to be done in a far better way than "passport is teh worse". --klaus

Belgian case
I'm surprised the Belgian loss for Google hasn't been covered in this. --Brianmc 10:44, 24 September 2006 (UTC)
 * I made a first step... Feel free to complete... Duxxyy
 * Some links in Dutch
 * http://www.tijd.be/mijn_nieuws/ondernemingen/artikel.asp?id=2443595


 * http://www.tijd.be/mijn_nieuws/ondernemingen/artikel.asp?Id=2439229


 * http://www.tijd.be/mijn_nieuws/artikel.asp?Id=2450086


 * http://www.tijd.be/mijn_onderneming/technologie/t-zine/artikel.asp?Id=2449315


 * http://www.tijd.be/print/?Id=2443592&AgencyId=6


 * French and German (? only a very small part of Belgium speeks German) newspapers represented by Copiepresse got a conviction. Google has put the text for some days on it's .be site as demanded by the court. The publichers wanted to force Google to negociate and make agreements with the publichers. A workinggroup was formed within the AMJ.
 * It is said that Google now blocks or hides the sites of the newspapers from it's search results on the .be site. However the sites of the papers are still apparing on the other Google sites. But users in Belgium are automaticly pointed to the .be site. Google would defend this action as a large interpretation of the court order.

An appeal was held

The Belgian copyright case info was moved to the copyright infringement section at the beginning of the criticism and controversy section. Rephrased and referenced. Dr. Cash 22:45, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Merger: Google and privacy issues
Now that the criticism of Google content has been separated from the history section, I would like to suggest that we merge the Google and privacy issues article into this one. The content in the other article is not very well organized, so it can be condensed, cleaned up, referenced, and added to the 'privacy' section here. Merging would also help to reduce the content forking as well. Dr. Cash 19:45, 7 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Seeing no objections, the article has been merged into this article. Dr. Cash 21:27, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Merger: Censorship by Google
Merging information from the censorship by google article into this one will reduce the content fork and keep all information critical of google in one place. Dr. Cash 21:32, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Oppose, because documenting censorship is not particulary a criticism. Also note that there already is a fair deal of content, and taking into account the cumulative nature of such information, it isn't going to get any smaller 69.88.149.90 21:40, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Oppose, this article is already quite long and may possibly get longer. There shouldn't be a content fork, since this article is solely for censorship related information, not other Google criticisms. The Google criticisms page has a "main article" link to this, so it should be fine.--Daveswagon 04:29, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
 * oppose better visible and linkable if seperate. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 19:22, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Support, they are roughly the same topic. --Will James 07:44, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Removed part about other governments
I removed the end of the following sentence:

Google can be forced to hand over all such information to the U.S. government (I kept that, I removed this):

...or any other government of a country which Google serves.

I went over the ref attached, it did not state this. Whats more, I believe this is false. Google is a US company, even if it works in some other country and even if it has offices there, that government cannot access or demand access to that information. DuckeJ (talk) 19:55, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Persistant Paragraph
The following pararaph keeps reappearing, in the same wording exactly, in the article:

In January 2008, Google has admitted one of its best kept secrets. Yossi Matias, the head of Google Tel Aviv in Isreal, hired a person that his search history suggests a severe mental illness. Since Google had to reject the candidate eventually, for no reason, Google has essentially admitted, for the fisrt time in history, that it looks at the search history of the candidates. This was supposed to be a secret, i.e something that is obvious but that does not have a written proof. Now it has one, and this is one of the biggest scandals in history.

In fact, its been deleted (each time by a different user) and returned (by the original author) 5 times in less than 24 hours. This in of itself is a violation of WP:3RR.

Regarding paragraph itself it's in violation with just about every wikipedia guideline there is. It's not written according to WP:NPOV, the only mention of this incident is in a (rather badly written) personal website. This is a violation of WP:sources and WP:REDFLAG and a stark violation of WP:fringe and WP:NOR. DuckeJ (talk) 14:01, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Lawsuits
Does every single lawsuit against Google constitute "criticism"? I can understand the relevance of the Authors Guild lawsuit, although it should probably be centered around the criticism and not around the details of how much they are sueing for. But how do the Viacom and Perfect10 lawsuits contribute to understanding the criticism against Google?

I think the "Copyright" paragraph would be more informative as an explanation of what criticism Google receives with copyright violations and not a partial list of copyright lawsuits. Does anybody object? DuckeJ (talk) 14:14, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
 * I restructured the article a bit, removed the lawsuits that were not "criticism" added a few referrences and put cite needed tags on the things I couldn't find. DuckeJ (talk) 20:42, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Criticism of Google -> Google Controversies
The title of this article is inherently POV. I think this can be fixed by renaming the article "Google Controversies". &mdash; X  S  G  21:16, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
 * It's used elsewhere as well: Criticism of Wikipedia, Criticism of Microsoft. Funny there's still no Criticism of Yahoo. DuckeJ (talk) 22:03, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
 * I'll work on getting these changed as well. Not so much with the Yahoo Controversy page, though; it'd probably need to be merged soon enough... &mdash;  X  S  G  22:06, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
 * How is "criticism of google" inherently POV? It simply states "Here lie examples of people who have criticized Google." Do the examples not exist? Oh, they do? Then it's not POV. Chicopac (talk) 03:38, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Overuse of citation-needed
Their are far too many citation-needed tags in this article for things that are common sense, and common knowledge. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Wageslave (talk • contribs) 03:52, 2 March 2008 (UTC)


 * I strongly disagree. Many of the things you claim to be "common knowledge" are unsourced rumors and unverified slander. Stating them in Wikipedia as facts just hinders Wikipedias credibility. If they are facts, they should be sourced. If they are not sourced, they should not appear in an encyclopedic article. If they must be placed in one, then people shuold know that there is no verification for these facts, using cite-needed tags. DuckeJ (talk) 20:49, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Clean Energy
I removed the following sentence from the end of the section on clean energy, right before the reference to the Harpers artice:

The article asserts that their attempts at staying green may be superficial.

Firstly, the article speculates this, secondly, stating this is redundant. This whole paragraph is already currently phrased an overly negative, one sided POV, emphasizing speculation on energy consumption and downplaying efforts for clean energy made by Google. DuckeJ (talk) 20:46, 29 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Oh? Hm. Looks like your new version up-plays their kindness. Is that not also POV? Exercising a little downplaying yourself, much? Hm, looks like a two-sided coin. Doesn't seem fair. The original paragraph never said it wasn't an assertion of the article. This, in contrast, is not only badly worded, but has a biased tone.


 * Well, whatever, I changed the wording, but don't worry it retains everything you said. I merely removed "Despite the fact that" because this is a phrase which 10 year olds use as a rhetorical pre-assertion of the correctness of their standpoint. As I said, I left in all that you put there. Are we alright, with this?

24.177.120.179 (talk) 02:32, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Just state the facts, and avoid both "despite" or "in spite" or any other attempt to make judgment of their actions. -- Zim Zala Bim talk  02:39, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Am I to understand there's no such thing as tonal bias? If that's true, then I guess the way you edited it IS free from bias. Then the world has four corners. Where flying pigs abound. But I won't even bother to change it. I'll leave it, sadly, in its shamefully un-Wikipedian state. Chicopac (talk) 09:08, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
 * What is your point, and what wording would you suggest? -- Zim Zala Bim talk  13:55, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

PageRank
I removed the following paragraph from the "pagerank" section:

In September 2007, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has brought a two-pronged case against Trading Post and Google - including subsidiaries Google Australia and Google Ireland - for potentially misleading consumers by selling its rankings to commercial companies rather than sorting them by relevance.

The reference was to http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/07/13/business/AS-TEC-Australia-Google.php

This lawsuite has nothing to do with selling rankings or even with pagerank in any way. It's about using brand names as Adwords. DuckeJ (talk) 19:29, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

"Furthermore, the deletion of critical sites from Google results (for example, sites critical of Scientology[27])" - This is either old news or just wrong. I made a google search for "Scientology" and the results were: 2 from en.wikipedia.org, 2 from www.scientology.org, 1 in Romanian (I use the Romanian version of Google) and then 2 from www.xenu.net. The article that is refered in that [27] note says that XENU doesn't appear on Google search.MihaiC (talk) 08:44, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Confirmed, agreed, deleted. DuckeJ (talk) 18:56, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Chilling Effects
The reference in the first paragraph to Google linking to blocked results at the Chilling Effects website appears to be outdated. The NYT article cited is dated January 2002. Can anyone confirm this? 132.235.156.95 (talk) 16:11, 14 July 2008 (UTC)