"Anarchy is not chaos, but order without control." »» David Layson

Google’s Latest Hypocrisy

Posted on November 20, 2007
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I was randomly surfing the web while killing some time at the auto dealership today waiting for Rover to get repaired and somehow found my way to The Official Google Blog where I read this (mostly boring) post from Rachel Whetstone, Director of Global Communications and Public Affairs. It included two whoppers, IMO-

At Google we have a bias in favor of people’s right to free expression in everything we do. We are driven by a belief that more information generally means more choice, more freedom and ultimately more power for the individual.

Except, of course, when it comes to PageRank and blogs that may occasionally get paid for the personal opinion pieces they post. Or is Google trying to equate reviews of drug rehabilitation centers with child porn? The second bit of hypocrisy (in this single post) had to do with search engine results-

Search is the least restricted category. We remove results from our index only when required by law (for example, when linked to content infringing copyright) and in a small number of other instances, such as spam results or results including unauthorized credit card and social security numbers. Where feasible, we tell our users when we remove results.

Unless, of course, your name is John Chow. Yeah, yeah, Google didn’t actually remove JohnChow.com, but how can they claim any sort of relevancy when burying his site on results pages of users searching for him by name?

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