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
DAVE ID
If you believe in free speech and freedom of information NOTHING SHOULD BE BANNED, Freedom of expression protects what you don’t want to hear or see.
zim
sorry I just typed bittorren into google and it gave me all sorts of bittorrent results and assumed I’d meant bittorrent. I got 77,7000,000 results. Sorry article is a FAIL!
Simon
Read the article and Motorsheep’s comment. This article is about Google suggestions and not searches.
Optamizm
Sorry, you fail…
Motorsheep
Many of these comments re-enforce the sad fact that people tent to comment on articles they haven’t actually read… I was able to get suggestions from google all the way up to “Bit”, but as soon as I typed “Bitt” the suggestions stopped. Same for other torrent-related searches; the minute that a torrent-related result was the only option the suggestions clearly stopped. This is different from typing in “Bittoren” and getting bittorent results when you finally click “search”. This article is about google suggestions, not google results, and is both accurate and very telling about Google’s priorities.
No to go find that formula for meth…
The Great Badger Crunch
Hell, it was obvious that Bush and Blair and Howard were lying their butts off about Iraq, and committing vast war crimes…the evidence was all there, they seemed to revel in their villainy, and it was clear they were criminals, yet what did you people do? NOTHING. Ah, but the minute you think someone might be threatening your ability to steal the new Kings Of Leon album or the latest misogynistic torture porn movie, and you’re suddenly Che Guevara fighting for freedom. Hypocrites.
Anonymous D
If I go to google.ca, right now, and type in “bittorrent” it gives me nothing… even when I complete the word; same goes for all the other words he listed.
I can guarantee to you, it’s blocked where I am… tried two other computers, got a mac user friend to do it, tried it on firefox, IE, chrome and asked a friend to try Opera just for completeness.
No suggestions.