I wrote an
e-mail to the PR manager of Google, David Krane, during the first
week of May 2005, complaining that Google had allowed an ad to
be run by the DNC against a leading Republican Senator accused of
possible misuse of lobby funds.
Yet Google
would not allow a counter conservative ad to be run with identical
copy paid for by RightMarch.com. Only the name of the candidate was changed in
the ad, yet Google would still refused to run it.
Rightmarch then asked people on its
e-mail list to write to Google about this obvious bias and provided
an e-mail contact list to a few of Google's key managers.
I saw the
act by the DNC as the pot calling the kettle black. But I was more
disturbed to read in earlier news reports that Google's employees were
donating political funds only to the DNC.
To prove that
the media itself is biased like Google, many outlets refused to print
stories that offended their left agenda to sway and taint opinions. You
probably were never allowed to read about this story on Google's bias
unless you caught it on an independent news site such as the Drudge
Report.
In this same e-mail, I also complained
that my 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. I also checked beyond 25 pages.
While Mr. Krane did not respond to
my e-mail in writing, he did respond behind closed doors. A few days
after I sent an e-mail, suddenly I saw that search words, which used to
bring up my URL in Google, no longer worked.
I checked other search engines that
did not use Google's service, and my 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.
I 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 my URL was in fact registered with Google using their
own test.
Knowing freedom really is knowledge,
I was 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.
And that was in 2005!
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 political gain.
I had no idea Google was filled with this much abuse of power until
it happened to my small domain.
If Google can stop a specific URL
from appearing in a search, it is 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 me they have heard complaints from other Webmasters concerning
Google's bias. However since Google is a private company, not much can be
done.
I wrote a second e-mail to Krane
a month later, asking why Google was scrubbing my URL from its searches.
Again I received no reply.
So I put up a simple page when surfers
came to my URL from other sources,
informing them that Google had blackballed my URL.
Within a week a test for my site 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 those mastered by the Third
Reich was a thing of the past, you were wrong.
They've
just gotten better at it over the years.
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. I e-mailed my complaint, with a test to prove my point,
to a local radio station that promotes citizens to "Stand Up."
But they didn't reply.
And I 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 my URL. I even sent a registered
letter to RightMarch's CEO,William Greene, concerning my support
for his organization, which had gotten my URL blackballed by Google.
Not one responded to any of my correspondences, proving no one gave a damn about Google's growing power to control what people were allowed to see on the Internet around the world.
Finally, I see I'm not the only ones having a problem with Google's
ethics. Microsoft in, July 2005, felt their arrogant bite,
too.
And in May of 2004, the New York
Times was already getting on top of this asking in a headline that read,
"Is
a Do-Gooder Company a Good Thing." Their 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. My experience shows that everyone seems to have been
"Googlized," as if deaf and dumb through an alien
abduction. Hopefully, the concern for Google weaponizing searches will finally be addressed by Congress.
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.
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.”
That company that should
be… is not.
