Google starts censoring autocomplete and instant

[TSPenguin]

http://torrentfreak.com/google-starts-censoring-bittorrent-rapidshare-and-more-110126/

Think of it what you want...

I will be doing this for a while now: :beathead:

 

[Hielor]

I don't get the problem, you can still search for them, you'll just have to type it out and press enter.

 

[Artlav]

Well, it won't last long, or Google won't last long.
There are other search engines that are quite capable.

 

[Rtyh-12]

I don't get the problem, you can still search for them, you'll just have to type it out and press enter.

But what if they start censoring the results?

Move to Bing...

 

[Xyon]

I don't get the problem, you can still search for them, you'll just have to type it out and press enter.

For now. The precedent this decision sets, however, suggests that Google are caving to corporate pressures various. It wouldn't surprise me if, in a few years, those terms are excluded from search results as well.

 

[Carmen A]

Google already showed it will censor for the highest bidder — China Inc. springs to mind. Now it’s doing it for MPAA & Co.,” King told TorrentFreak.

“I guess it’s simple: our favorite search monopoly cares less about helping the thousands of independent creators who use BitTorrent to distribute legal, free-to-share content than they do about protecting the interests of Big Media in its death throes.”

Indeed, Google is going down the wrong path by willingly and broadly censoring its services to please a few big companies. This is not the way to get rid of piracy, it’s the way to a corporate controlled Internet. Google may have been proud to leave China because of its political censorship, but it should be ashamed of promoting commercial censorship worldwide.

Okay time to consider other search engines.

 

[Rtyh-12]

This is not the way to get rid of piracy,

This is the way to more piracy. No one is pirating Ubuntu, but who has actually bought a Windows license? The less freedom there is, the more piracy there is.

 

[garyw]

This is the way to more piracy. No one is pirating Ubuntu, but who has actually bought a Windows license? The less freedom there is, the more piracy there is.

Sorry, Maybe I am missing the point but you are saying that by removing one mechanism to piracy you are actually forcing people to pirate and that people who search for torrents via google aren't going to use them?

Google are a corporate entity. It's up to them how they conduct business. If they so choose to exclude torrents then they can do that. If you so choose to not use them, well, there are others out there. Consumer choice.

If you want to download a legal torrent, e.g. unbuntu it doesn't take a rocket scientist to type 'unbuntu' into Google, go to the home page, download, torrent, done.

I think Google is making the right decision here. As a big company they are one of the few who can make an impact on piracy. They can also save themselves money by not having to scale up hardware to meet the demands of those who are using it just for illegal file sharing sites.

Good on Google.

 

[Pyromaniac605]

but who has actually bought a Windows license?

Me. :facepalm:

Personally I don't think that censoring BitTorrent and other torrent software sites is fair, torrents and torrent software is completely legal, it's what some people do with torrents that makes it illegal.

 

[Urwumpe]

Still, it leaves an acid taste. Not by that Google filters. Google has always been filtering. But the selection of keywords is pretty strange, and could also be understood as a way of economic warfare, since it includes the names of other companies.

Guess the outcry, if Windows wouldn't show any files having Linux in its name.

 

[Ghostrider]

I think Google is making the right decision here. As a big company they are one of the few who can make an impact on piracy.

They can also make an impact on everybody else. One day the word you can't use will be "Dalai Lama".

 

[garyw]

So you make a consumer choice and use another search engine. There are plenty out there.

 

[Urwumpe]

So you make a consumer choice and use another search engine. There are plenty out there.

Really plenty of them? I am only aware of three, that are somehow useful for finding stuff. One of the alternatives already does serious censorship for not offending the Chinese market.

 

[garyw]

I never said they would be any good :lol:

Prior to google I used to use www.dogpile.com

 

[tblaxland]

As far as I can tell, the Instant service still works, just not the auto-complete. FWIW, I normally have Instant off anyway :shrug:

 

[Urwumpe]

As far as I can tell, the Instant service still works, just not the auto-complete. FWIW, I normally have Instant off anyway :shrug:

Same here, instant is annoying.

 

[TSPenguin]

I think Google is making the right decision here. As a big company they are one of the few who can make an impact on piracy. They can also save themselves money by not having to scale up hardware to meet the demands of those who are using it just for illegal file sharing sites.

Like any censoring list I saw so far, it is the things that don't make sense that bugs me. It is obviously their choice to try and reduce the use of their product for piracy purposes.
Having utorrent in the filter... Seems a little out of line.

That they alienate anyone with the name torrent, or anyone searching for anything with torrent in it, legit or not, they obviously accept.

Google is such a big corporation, that they do not have to follow their own policies. Whatever happened to "Censorship is bad m'kay?!"?

 

[Wishbone]

Google = Skynet... sigh...

 

[Wally]

I never used Google to search for torrents... I had the impression that Google is already banning torrent files, so from my point of view, no real change from now on

 

[marooder86]

I never used Google to search for torrents... I had the impression that Google is already banning torrent files, so from my point of view, no real change from now on

That's right, torrents sites have their own search engines so what's the point of using Google for that purpose anyway.