Censorship by Google

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Google search engine has been criticised for removing entries from its web and news search services for various reasons, and for refusing to accept certain types of advertising.

1 Web search
2 Websites
3 News search
- 3.1 Sites critical of Islam
- 3.2 Site critical of U.S. policy
4 Advertising
5 References
6 External links

[edit] Web search

[edit] Germany and France

On October 22, 2002, a study reported that approximately 113 Internet sites had been removed from the German and French versions of Google.^[1] This censorship mainly affected White Nationalistic, Nazi, anti-semitic, and radical Islamic websites. Under French and German law, hate speech and Holocaust denial are illegal. Google complies with these laws by not including sites containing such material in its search results. There is no direct way to check whether a search has been affected in this way.

Google Germany allows no links through AdWords to websites containing images of naked people, going so far as to even ban sites displaying nude male upper torsos.^[2]

[edit] China

Main article: Google China

Comparing Image Search results of, "Tiananmen" on Google France and Google China (February 15, 2006)

Two "sensitive" images slip through the net on Page 5 of the Image Search results of, "Tiananmen" on Google China (February 15, 2006).

Controversy has occurred over Google's decision to adhere to the Internet censorship policy in mainland China, colloquially known as, "The Great Firewall of China". Google.cn search results are filtered so as not to bring up any results concerning the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, sites supporting the independence movements of Tibet and Taiwan or the Falun Gong movement, and other information perceived to be harmful to the People's Republic of China. This is interpreted by some activists as against the "Don't Be Evil" corporate philosophy of Google.

The People's Republic of China (PRC), whose human rights have been criticized by people in both China and the international community, has in the past restricted citizen access to popular search engines such as Altavista, Yahoo!, and Google. The mirror search site elgooG has been used by users in mainland China to get around blocked content. This complete ban has since been lifted. However, the government remains active in filtering Internet content. In October 2005, Blogger and access to the Google Cache were made available in mainland China; however, in December 2005, some mainland Chinese users of Blogger reported that their access to the site was once again restricted.

In January 2006, Google affirmed its intent to filter certain keywords given to it by the government of the PRC. The restrictions will apply to thousands of terms and websites.^[3] The censored content will appear on a website called google.cn. Google was heavily criticized for the move, yet it claims it is necessary to keep the PRC government from blocking Google entirely, as the case of the 2002 block^[4]. The company does not plan to give the government information about the users who search for blocked content, and will inform users of restricted categories.^[5] Google states on its help pages that it does not censor content, but it does block pages as demanded for in certain jurisdictions, such as DMCA requests in the United States.

Most Chinese Internet users did not express much concern about Google's choice, with one blogger saying that censorship is a fact of life in China and Google could not have done any better.^[6]^[7] Also, Google offers to Chinese Internet users a choice that protects their privacy better than existing search engines available in China, since Google keeps confidential records of its users outside China, unlike domestic search engines that could be compelled by the government to hand over information at any time.^[8] The following message appears at the bottom of the Google search result page whenever results are blocked: "In accordance with local laws and policies, some of the results have not been displayed." Currently, Google is the only major China-based search engine to explicitly inform the user when search results are blocked or hidden.

On the other hand, Google has been accused of hypocrisy for agreeing to China's demands and fighting the US government's requests for information concerning Google-users, by groups such as Reporters Without Borders [1]. Critics say that Google had made a great deal of its mission statement, in that it was different from other "evil" Internet corporations, to gain support when it started.

On February 5, 2006, Google.com was banned by China Telecom in an attempt to force users of Google toward the Google.cn domain, however the ban was lifted shortly thereafter.

On February 14, 2006, some Internet users participated in a "mass breakup with Google" whereby users agreed to boycott Google on Valentine's Day to show their disapproval of the Google China policy.^[9]^[10]

A simple test can be performed to quantify the number of pages which google.cn censors as compared to those listed in google.com. Search using this string to compare the approximate dot-com index differential:

site:.com

Other top level domains can be compared similarly (.org, .cn, etc.). Searches for essential html tags, such as <html> returns the difference for all domains.

[edit] Scientology

In 2002 Google was found to have censored websites that provided critical information about Scientology, in compliance with the United States' DMCA legislation.[2] [3]

Google replaced the banned results with links to the DMCA complaint that caused the site to be removed. The DMCA complaint contains the site to be removed, and the organizations that requested the removal (e.g. [4]) The publicity stemming from this incident was the impetus for Google's making public of the DMCA notices on the Chilling Effects archive, which archives legal threats of all sorts made against Internet users and Internet sites.[5]

[edit] Websites

Google blocks the websites of competitors to you its Youtube subsidiary from its results sets like liveleak.com.^[11]

[edit] News search

[edit] Sites critical of Islam

In early 2006 Google removed several news sites from its news search engine because complaints were received about various articles that were critical of Islam.^[12]^[13] These included the The New Media Journal, which contained phrasing such as in the "World of Islam ... it is common for the men to have multiple wives, and harvest many children with each of his wives to train for martyrdom."^[14] Other sites removed included MichNews and The Jawa Report.

These sites remain accessible from Google's main search page as normal, but are no longer included in Google News. Google responded by stating that "We do not allow articles and sources expressly promoting hate speech viewpoints in Google News, although referencing hate speech for commentary and analysis is acceptable".

[edit] Site critical of U.S. policy

On January 12, 2007, the news site Uruknet stopped appearing in the Google News index.^[15]

[edit] Advertising

In February 2003, Google stopped showing the adverts of Oceana, a two-and-a-half-year-old non-profit organization, which was protesting the environmental effects of a major cruise ship operation's sewage treatment practices. Google claimed that their editorial policy states, "that Google does not accept advertising if the ad or site advocates against other individuals, groups, or organizations." In 2004, this ban was partially lifted, allowing more positive ads from Oceana to be displayed, but some confusion remains about the criteria for banning.^[16]