Google has allegedly begun censoring its shopping search engine to exclude firearms and any accessories related to shooting.
I say "allegedly" because I just plugged ".45 colt ammo" into Google Shopping and got results. On the other hand, "colt 1911" had no results.
Look, Google is a large corporation and as such, they are both bound to both be full of idiot managers and they are free to set whatever stupid policies they want. We all should know, by now, that Goggle's "don't be evil" motto is nothing but eyewash.
But neither you nor I or any of the other gunnies out there have to use them. Search engines thrive on being used, or, as one term has it, "eyeballs". Maybe it is time to consider to start to deny some of those eyeballs to Google.
Another thing: If Google is going to start censoring its shopping results, how long will it be before Google starts telling its bloggers what they can and can't write about? Blogspot is a Google entity and that makes Goggle the publisher of all of these blogs. And before you start bleating about the First Amendment, the law is clear on this: Publishers have the right to control content on their publications. Google can say "no blogging about guns", just like Fox New, an agitprop arm of the GOP, can tell its anchors "never say anything good about a Democrat".
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9 comments:
That is a rather bone headed move on their part even if E-Bay is doing something similar. They are already are being investigated by Republicans for anti-competitive behavior... whoops... I mean donating to Democrats.
If I ever needed some info about guns , I would just email you.
LMAO!
I just tried
"colt 1911" (in quotes)
in vanilla google search, and got 2.8 M results
3rd & 4th hits were Colt 1911 pistols for sale.
Maybe you have some google setting on wierd?
I just tried googling "colt 1911" and got millions of hit, with 'for sale' at top of list.
I went into Google Shopping and entered Smith & Wesson and saw a lot of guns I could buy if so inclined and if I lived south of the 49th. I think that rumor is just that.
Regarding censoring blogs, right now Blogger qualifies under the Safe Harbor provisions of the Communications Act of 1996, which says that Google is not responsible for its content as long as Google does not exercise editorial control. The moment Google starts exercising editorial control they get the blammo hammer applied to them because every content provider that has ever tried to sue a blogger ever, then is allowed to sue Google instead.
In other words, under the Communications Act currently Google is *not* a publisher, they're a service provider, merely the equivalent of the ink seller who sells the ink to the newspaper for printing the newspaper. You don't sue the ink seller when the newspaper libels someone, and you don't sue Google when a blogger libels someone. But the moment Google starts exercising editorial control, they're like a newspaper and they, not the blogger who posted something, gets sued.
They're not going there. Period. The Safe Harbor provision says they must take down pages when notified that said pages violate copyright or some law, but they are *not* going to exercise editorial control over blogs otherwise, because that would open them up to massive, massive damages in a swarm of lawsuits on the part of anybody who has ever been wronged by any blogger anywhere. Ain't happenin'.
The thing that makes me sort of believe the "no guns" thing is that in the agreement for Google's blog advertising program, Google doesn't want bloggers to link to sites which sell firearms. So this wouldn't be without precedent.
On the other hand, Google is fully capable of walking this back without any admission that they ever tried it.
Try Duck Duck Go. They don't track queries, nor do they try to fit the query results to what they think your tastes might be. They also have an HTTPS (encrypted) version of their site (which is what I linked to).
Their search results aren't as extensive as Google's (it's hard to find any articles from a certain blog there, for instance, but it's reasonably good at finding useful results.
Forgot to mention that I tried the "colt 1911" search, and got a number of hits, and a picture.
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