Google excluding controversial sites

Google, the world's most popular search engine, has quietly deleted more than 100 controversial sites from some search result listings.

Absent from Google's French and German listings are Web sites that are anti-Semitic, pro-Nazi or related to white supremacy, according to a new report from Harvard University's Berkman Center. Also banned is Jesus-is-lord.com, a fundamentalist Christian site that is adamantly opposed to abortion.

Google confirmed on Wednesday that the sites had been removed from listings available at Google.fr and Google.de. The removed sites continue to appear in listings on the main Google.com site.

news.cnet.com...

It's not a great surprise, I guess google have no obligation to give us freedom of information... it's probably easy to navigate around it.

What's the alternative to this though? Will yahoo be any different - in 6 months time??? *coughs* bear in mind I'm from the UK here, so this may have a bearing on my view of "Nationalised" media (BBC).

Theoretically it would seem to be at a nations (the peoples) interest to have a web-engine/browser that is subsidised by government (the people -via taxes), that is entirely non-partisan and non-censored other than on an age basis similar to that of films.

Of course this is a total joke and I wouldn't trust any member of my government as far as I could kick them.

I want to know how they are going to go...this may just be a small build up to censoring anything controversial such as sites like ATS....that would p#ss me off if sites like this came under some government power....

reply to post by booda


Thats not going to happen. Yes they view material that is being fed through ATS but they would never attempt to shut it down. Gives people something else to talk about and hold above their heads!

reply to post by The Shade


true that they probably wouldnt shut down a site but maybe filter certain parts of it....such as 911 - how much independent research has gone into that and if SHTF they may do something about it.....

It probably won't be financially astute to shut down or "ban" certain sites, ATS will be generating revenue somehow and it is probably much more useful to be able to monitor who is using it and I'm sure this also applies to other websites that may be deemed controversial...

It's interesting though, to note that both countries mentioned Germany and France both currently have right wing governments.

I LIKE it when people give you something solid, like the example you gave of jesus-is-lord.com, not being showed by google. My google found it fine when i did a search..... hey tell me some other sites so I can check them too!!

reply to post by Inkrinhuminge


hahaha - yes - googled it and there it was....

Think they're only banned through google.fr/dk etc

Although, I think banning jesus-is-lord.com and sites like it only lend them creedence...

Ok boys , can we get a list of some other good search engines posted ?

Thanks .

reply to post by Max_TO


Did a search for the top 10 search engines excluding google

Yahoo
www.yahoo.com...

MSN Live
www.live.com...

Ask
www.ask.com...

AOL Search
search.aol.com...

AltaVista
www.altavista.com...

FastSearch
www.fastsearch.com...

GigaBlast
www.gigablast.com...

Netscape Search
search.netscape.com...

Snap
www.snap.com...

A New one WolframAlpha
www.wolframalpha.com...

Added WolframAlpha to the list even though its not live yet it looks good...


[edit on 11/5/2009 by booda]

Yeah, I figured that out awhile back. I typed in a clinton + lewinski + mossad at the time I had only gotten a few hundred hits, none of them really relevant, I did again as I was posting to get the exact number and this time I recieved 3890 (although I did not scroll them all to see relevancy). I had also tried searching something to the effect of mossad email + 9/11 and had received nothing. It seems whenever I goggle anything to do with Israeli conspiracy my results are limited at best, if relevant at all.

Originally posted by booda
Added WolframAlpha to the list even though its not live yet it looks good...

Sorry to be pedantic but Wolfram|Alpha is a computational question answering system that uses curated datasets and not actually a search engine.

Can't wait to try it out though!

-m0r

do google block these sites by request - I mean, if a lot of ATS complained to Google about a certain site would they eventually block it from their search.....