You might also like...

Monday, November 28, 2011

Google now censoring some websites





[Photo credit: http://www.toonpool.com/cartoons/Do%20no%20evil_5798]

My outspoken disgust for Apple and iPhone does not stem from personal reasons and as such it does not stop as a particular company or product. My objection, vehement and strong objection, is against limiting the users, restricting how they can live their lives. I have never been a big fan of Flash, I have never been a Flash developer and frankly I hate those annoying Flash ads that you have to watch on some websites. But I despise that Apple should decide whether users can have Flash on their devices or not. NO! It's the user's right to decide.

So when Google starts acting like a big brother and starts with censorship, no matter how small, no matter how benign in appearance, I wouldn't stand for  it. As of now, I am looking for a new search Engine. The link below is an article that'll explain why.

http://torrentfreak.com/google-now-censors-the-pirate-bay-isohunt-4shared-and-more-111123/

12 comments:

Bikram said...

I have no idea wht this is al labout ...


Bikram's

Sunil Goswami said...

When you type a word in Google, you get some "autocomplete" suggestions. Like if you type "iso" you'd get a list of words including "isohunt". But not any more. Google, in an attempt to cooperate with the government has started to censor all file-sharing websites. Now, you can still search for "isohunt" but only if you type the whole word, it won't be in the suggestions. Same for other sharing websites.

Unknown said...

Ooh...so now all those Google-type-wife jokes are obsolete!
On a serious note, as of now it is not yet implemented which is a nice thing, as it helps me when I dont know exactly how to spell the phrase or word that I'm looking for.

Sunil Goswami said...

Hey Pooja, I have never heard any of those jokes, mind telling us some?
It is implemented already, but the suggestions will continue working as before EXCEPT for those words that google things are related to piracy like "torrent" "isohunt" "bittorrent" etc.

R-A-J said...

Damn man.. guess my blog is probably also in Google's blacklist cos of my name :D.. wow, I feel like David already :)

But seriously man, feelin weird whn somebody takes away my freedom of being what I am. Yup, I'm also equally pissed with apple's decision to control what I wanna see n experience.. sad man, really, really sad..

Yip, lemme knw whn u found another search engine.. I'm doin the same..

thnx fr the info bro

Sunil Goswami said...

Hi RAJ, no, I don't think your blog is in the blacklist. Google has only started filtering out piracy related words yet. But rude words are already filtered out I think.
I am trying out Bing in Chrome at home right now and not liking it much. Before Google I used to use a software called Copernic 2000, it is a metasearcher and used to be really great for research. They have a new version called Copernic Agent, I thinking of going for that.

Btw, welcome to my blog. :)

Anonymous said...

Everything works well now, it no longer censores any websites. Glad to see it.

Sunil Goswami said...

No! They still do. Try typing thepiratebay.org in Chrome address bar or in google.com search box, as you type it will NOT give you thepiratebay.org in the autosuggestions.

Anonymous said...

It gives me thepiratebay.org in autosuggestions. It seems that it depends on countries (I live in Slovakia but also tried it in Spain, Greece and Turkey and it works everywere) and you're in UK right? It's probably country-dependent.

Sunil Goswami said...

Yes, it may very well be country-dependent. But also make sure that you haven't visited the site before or clear the history. If you have visited it before it'd give you that in autosuggestions from your history, that happens with me too, even though I am in the UK.

Anonymous said...

Autosuggestions from history are shown purple, right? I cleared my history and tried it on 5 browsers: Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Internet Explorer and the default Android browser. It shows them on all browsers, although I have cleared history and never visited any of those sites except Pirate Bay. I have noticed, however, that suggestions would never show "the pirate bay" or"pirate bay", only "thepiratebay.org".
BTW I like your blog, especially the "Why iPhone Sucks" article.

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.