We wrote an
e-mail to the PR manager of Google, David Krane, during the first
week of May 2005 complaining that while Google had allowed an ad to
be run by the DNC against a leading Republican Senator accused of
possible misuse of lobby funds, Google
would not allow a counter ad to be run with identical
copy paid for by RightMarch.com, only the name changed in
the ad to the lead Democrat in the Senate . . . this individual clearly
proven to have accepted similar funds for personal travel, many newspapers
holding back these stories.
Rightmarch had asked people on its
e-mail list to write to Google about this obvious bias, their providing
a contact list to a few of Google's key managers.
We saw this
act by the DNC as the pot calling the kettle black. But we were more
disturbed to read in earlier news reports that Google's employees
only
donated political funds to the DNC.
To prove that
the media itself is biased like Google, many outlets refusing to print
stories that offend its left agenda to sway and taint opinions, you
probably were never allowed to read about this story on Google's bias
unless catching it on an independent news site such as the Drudge
Report.
In this same e-mail, we also complained
that our URL would never come up when the words "freedom is knowledge"
were typed into the Google search engine for a test. Yet other URLs,
such as "freedomofknowledge," would quickly come up in that
Google search, our checking beyond 25 pages.
While Mr. Krane did not respond to
our e-mail in writing, he did respond behind closed doors. A few days
after we sent our e-mail, suddenly we saw search words that used to
bring up our URL in Google no longer worked.
We checked other search engines that
did not use Google's service, and our URL still came up in their searches
with words we knew would be unique to our URL. In fact, our URL came
up within the first two pages on these searches.
We had followed the suggested guidelines
of Google for Webmasters, such as proper meta tag copy, no frames
on the homepage, search text copy on the homepage page, along with
proof that our URL was in fact registered with Google using their
own test.
Knowing freedom really is knowledge,
we were very disturbed to see one of the world's top search engines
biased in their searches . . . a very dangerous event to a free society
and for an Internet that was supposed to be free from control by arrogant
corporate suits.
You think you're getting all the information
gleaned from the Web, only to discover your search for information
is being censored by watching eyes at Google for its political gain.
We had no idea Google was filled with this much abuse of power until
it happened to our URL
If Google can stop a specific URL
from appearing in a search, they are in effect saying in search results
that a URL does not exist on the Web. Think of it as if a publisher
had removed words from a dictionary that offended its political agenda.
With American citizens running around
today with too few patriots among them, they have become like cattle
too easy to move around the ranch while never challenging what they
are being fed. Google has obviously learned that Americans who are
fat, rich, and lazy can be easy targets for abuse as they graze.
One of our professional contacts has
told us they have heard complaints from other Webmasters concerning
Google's bias, but Google being a private company, not much can be
done to Google's billionaires.
We wrote a second e-mail to Krane
a month later, asking why Google was scrubbing our URL from its searches.
Again we received no reply.
So we put up a simple page when surfers
came to our URL from other sources such as www.alltheweb.com,
informing them that our URL had been blackballed by Google.
Within a week, our test for our site
being registered on Google also failed. If you thought the Web was
free from censorship, you were wrong. If you thought control of public
relations and manipulation of ideas, such as mastered by the Third
Reich was a thing of the past, you are wrong. They've
just gotten better at it.
You would think freedom-of-speech
media-types would be concerned that the largest search engine in the
"free" world would be blackballing small sites behind closed
doors. We e-mailed our complaint, with a test to prove our point,
to a local radio station that promotes citizens to"Standup,"
but they didn't our receiving no interest or reply.
And we e-mailed the same to the O'Reilly
Factor on FOX, to the Scarborough Country on MSNBC, to the Republican
Lawyer's Group at Harvard, to our state's congressional Senator, the
Honorable Elizabeth Dole, and a second complaint to Google, asking
the basis for their blackballing our URL. We even sent a registered
letter to RightMarch's CEO,William Greene, concerning our support
for his organization had gotten our URL blackballed by Google.
Not one responded to any of our correspondences.
Finally, we
see we're not the only ones having a problem with Google's
Enron-like ethics, Microsoft in July 2005 feeling their arrogant bite,
too.
And in May of 2004, the New York
Times was already on top of this asking in a headline that read,
"Is
a Do-Gooder Company a Good Thing." The article asked
the question . . .
"But will Google be able
to adhere to its famous corporate ethos, "don't do evil,"
with its role as the Internet's chief gatekeeper bolstered by the
several billion dollars a stock sale is expected to raise? Supporters
and critics alike agree that the public would do well to scrutinize
the effects of Google's outsize influence, whether or not it adheres
to its promises of trustworthiness?"
Obviously the public isn't, and the
media won't. Our experience shows that everyone seems to have been
"Googlized," as if deaf and dumb through an alien
abduction. Hopefully, the word will finally get out.
One professional who knows the truth
said it this way:
I’m sorry to burst the bubble
about Google and its “Don’t Do Evil” motto. Google
has the power to block certain websites at its whim and does.
If a Web site is on the wrong
side politically or in some other way (at Google’s discretion),
the Webmaster may wake up one morning and find all references to
the URL and key words to that site on Google wiped away like magic.
Suddenly the site no
longer exists in cyberspace unless someone searches through another
engine such as AlltheWeb.
It’s a well kept secret
and especially unfortunate since Google made this statement in the
NY Times, 5/2/04: “Searching
and organizing all the world’s information is an unusually
important task that should be carried out by a company that is trustworthy
and interested in the public good.”
The company that “should
be…” is not.
Note: In 2007:
"It seems two years later Google's creators better understand their responsibility to promote the truth in a world where anyone anywhere can so easily connect to anyone everywhere, a world where lunch is always being served. Google is learning that it's the human thing to do no matter what government is using its services.
But to suppress knowledge through censoring when operating within a dictatorship, all within the hope a democracy will eventually spring forth, as Google had done in China, is like giving a dying patient poison in hope after the cancer cells are dead life will return."
Webmaster
