Google being an **s hole

[Dan Den]

Google Censored Torrent Sites

Source

Google’s efforts to overcome its piracy responsibilities have already taken the form of filtering all of the renowned file-sharing services from both its Autocomplete and Instant services.

After the search giant filtered words like “RapidShare”, “torrents”, and “BitTorrent”, experts noticed a rapid decrease in its searches. When they started the filtering system at the beginning of this year, they only filtered a couple of piracy-related terms. However, with new legislation named SOPA coming in hard, companies became cautious, and this is not surprising.

Now more search terms, including “the pirate bay,” “isohunt,” “torrentreactor,” and many other names of popular torrent trackers were excluded from Google’s “Autocomplete” and “Instant” services. Our service wasn’t left aside – it turned out that Goggled censored “extratorrent” term as well. In addition, the updated blacklist also covered websites like Fileserve and Filesonic.

Meanwhile, even if the search engine isn’t censoring the site itself, the implemented system is causing a significant drop in the service’s searches for the blacklisted terms. Google’s representatives were talking about the efficiency of the system, saying that there was no silver bullet for copyright infringement committed online, but this censoring system can be considered one of many that the company has implemented to fight it. Google admitted that this was something it looked at and decided to make some relatively easy changes to its Autocomplete algorithm to make some positive difference.

However, the industry observers point at the other side of the move. For example, isoHunt’s owner claimed that Google’s actions might lead to some negative path, pointing out that this move is more subtle than the filtering attempts made possible by the pending anti-piracy bills, while remaining censorship and starting small. The search giant is simply becoming a self-righteous Big Brother of the Internet, which can’t be encouraged by the industry players.

The Pirate Bay also commented the new system, saying that it was simply another step towards filtering their search engine without any sound legal basis. The Pirate Bay was also wondering why Google implemented the censoring system at almost the same time as they have released Google Music – a service for selling music which might also be found on different BitTorrent trackers.

After reading through this article am starting to think that that bloody bill might actually be passed in the end, you can still search for torrents but the main concern I have here is the path at which this is all going towards.

Express your view on the article.

[lemmingllama]

I agree, this is a bit worrying. Although I can see where Google is coming from, if they begin to censor stuff then it would be like the bill is already passed. Over a billion people use Google, so it can literally control websites from the general populace just by not showing it up. I really hope that these censorship things wont pass and that all the blacklisting is temporary

[ZeroPenguins]

Well it's not much of a big deal, it just means you have to type it out fully instead of being able to type one or two letters. It's not like Google is removing the search terms, if the time does come I know I won't be using Google anymore. I guess this is Google way of not supporting piracy.

[Dan Den]

Yeah you can still just type in fully what you want, but the problem is that this might be the seeds of the end of torents and servers and that bill will just allow the seed to fully grow.

If it should pass there is always Yahoo, but who knows if Google actually have things there way and are enforced by that bill in time they will censor everything to do with what it is as digital pirates do.

But this is what I say to you all Do what you want.

[CaNzCo]

I don't see where Google gets the nerve to censor searches on the internet. If I am going to get my freedoms encroached upon, it had better be by the government, not a site that is profiting because I use it.

[Malyssa Rahl]

The solution, stop using Google, or actually type out your searches.

[† Irish]

The solution, stop using Google, or actually type out your searches.

I agree with this. I've been trying to get away from google, cause it just seems that they want to do EVERYTHING and know EVERYTHING, which is something I don't like. They track everything you do. But as far as restricting searches. it isnt the first time that they have done that so its no surprise to me.

[CaNzCo]

The solution, stop using Google, or actually type out your searches.

It isn't so much that I can't solve the problem as it is Google causing problems in the first place. Even if I can say Obama sucks in house to my friends, I would still be pissed if I couldn't say it to anyone I met.

[Koby]

You do realize Google owns Yahoo right? They bought it a few years back. Almost all smaller search engines these days are ran via Google's engine as well. One of the few not owned by Google would be Bing, but Bing is a completely unreliable mess.

Google Search alone accounts for 98% of all internet search engines. Also over 80% of Kametsu visitors according to server stats come to Kametsu via Google searches. It'd be effectively cutting the a huge portion of visitors from the site.

[RikuoAmero]

You do realize Google owns Yahoo right? They bought it a few years back. Almost all smaller search engines these days are ran via Google's engine as well. One of the few not owned by Google would be Bing, but Bing is a completely unreliable mess.

Google Search alone accounts for 98% of all internet search engines. Also over 80% of Kametsu visitors according to server stats come to Kametsu via Google searches. It'd be effectively cutting the a huge portion of visitors from the site.

Um Koby, I typed "Google Buys Yahoo" into Google and all I got was a few news articles that its considering buying Yahoo. Although the Wikipedia page for Yahoo does say that Yahoo used Google's search engine from 2000-2004.

80% come here via Google? I sure hope that's not the long term members who, I hope like me, have it bookmarked.

[ZeroPenguins]

I heard about that too, but I never really saw any confirmation about Google buying Yahoo. To be honest I rather use Google over Yahoo, bing is just terrible and I know there's a new search engine coming out soon made by MC Hammer which is called wiredoo, I like to see how does that go but most cases probably gonna fail.

[Dan Den]

If what Koby say is "true" then pretty much Google is the pimp of search engines and by those estimates kind of rules the internet in a way. So inadvertently if Google is siding with that bill and it passes, we can consider ourselves butt fucked.

And Amero, I don't need to bookmark Kametsu or any other Forums I pretty much know most of their urls by head.

It would suck balls if Google started censoring Forum sites, but it wouldn't hurt me since I never discovered Kametsu off Google.

[Koby]

Um Koby, I typed "Google Buys Yahoo" into Google and all I got was a few news articles that its considering buying Yahoo. Although the Wikipedia page for Yahoo does say that Yahoo used Google's search engine from 2000-2004.

80% come here via Google? I sure hope that's not the long term members who, I hope like me, have it bookmarked.

Ah, I could have swore they had went through with it, but you're right. Last news I can find in search was of last month and they were still unsure. The main reason Google offered is because Microsoft was trying to takeover Yahoo and Google didn't want to let Microsoft do so.

As for the part about search engines, well I can't show you the server stats unless I take a screenshot, but I can show you the extremetracker of EDK: http://extremetracking.com/open?login=engdubk

As you can see there 63.44% of EDK's visitors come from Search Engines. Of that, 91.65% of the visitors via Search Engines came from Google's Search Engine. Which mean's Google accounts for the biggest portion of that 63.44% from Search Engines and that's just for English Dub Kingdom, much less the forum or the rest of the sites.

[Dan Den]

As for the part about search engines, well I can't show you the server stats unless I take a screenshot, but I can show you the extremetracker of EDK: http://extremetracking.com/open?login=engdubk

As you can see there 63.44% of EDK's visitors come from Search Engines. Of that, 91.65% of the visitors via Search Engines came from Google's Search Engine. Which mean's Google accounts for the biggest portion of that 63.44% from Search Engines and that's just for English Dub Kingdom, much less the forum or the rest of the sites.

Well according to those stats it would seem that if things go the way they are, only way to get to Kametsu would be by word of mouth or someone stumbling on it by mistake, funny it would seem most people there come looking for either Naruto Shippuden or Bleach oh well lets just hope things don't change.