Google’s war against torrents is being kept quiet. No announcements. No press releases. You will only find the story in blogs that are carefully watched.
In essence, Google is removing keywords from their Suggest and Instant results so that they are no longer recommended when people start typing them. If you continue all the way through on a term such as “BitTorrent,” Google will offer the results. Reluctantly. They won’t help you out at all, even if you type all the way to the “n.” Try typing in “BitTorren” without the last “t” into Google.
Apparently, they have no idea what you’re talking about.
It’s their search and they’ve made their choice. The funny part is that something as relatively harmless as downloading torrents is considered taboo on Google, but there are plenty of other more harmful searches that Google is all too willing to recommend…
92 User Comments
Warden Chinbach
Wow, you’re pretty dumb. They didn’t censor anything. They leave it out of the suggestions now. All you have to do is press the “enter” button. Or are you just that lazy?
Duncan
Leaving out suggestions intentionally is a form of censorship.
Tulip
No, a government’s use of its coercive power to prohibit suggestions is censorship. A private company leaving out suggestions intentionally is a business decision.
Fixx
Actually that would be censorship by a corporation. It’s done all the time on ingredient labels, press releases, etc. etc. The difference it that when done by a business as opposed to a government the motives and reasoning tends to be profit driven as opposed to morally driven. It seems to me that this is what the authour is pointing out. I think it’s certainly a valid observation.
Martin
“A private company leaving out suggestions intentionally is a business decision”
hahahaha stupid.
Plan 9
Bingo. It cracks me up how few people know what the 1st Amendment really says. You’re protected under the constitution against the government censoring any speech that doesn’t incite violence. A private company is well within its right to decide what is and what isn’t included in their products. I’m a proud Bittorrent-er and I also refuse to pretend to be a victim.
FKGOOG
EFF U GOOGLE. ok that was a bit harsh. i love google, they seem like a legit company, they just need to sort their priorities
gabe
except that they show plenty of links once you finish typing all of them. my sense of outrage is underwhelmed.
Dan
Of course, the RIAA doesn’t care if you kidnap children.
Harry Manmack
This info graphic made my eyes BLEED.