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Court
Is Cool With Google Cache
A lawsuit against Google's practice of caching web pages in its index was rejected
by a Nevada district court in a decision that could impact Google's claims of
"fair use" in its Book Search project.
House
Committee Chairman Upbraids Google
Virginia Republican Tom Davis, chair of the House Government Reform Committee,
called out Google for cooperating with China but not the US on its requests.
Microsoft
Launching Its “Google Labs”
After bringing Yahoo researcher Gary Flake into the Redmond fold last year, Microsoft
has decided to make him the leader of their "Live Labs" research and
development effort.
Microsoft
Opening Source Code For EU
General counsel Brad Smith announced in Brussels that Microsoft was going all
in and calling the EU over their Statement of Objections issued in December 2005.
Leahy
Calls For DOJ Google Explanation
US Senator Pat Leahy (D-Vt) has sent a written request to US Attorney General
Alberto Gonzales for more information about Justice's legal action against Google.
Blogger
News Network Dumps Google, Cites China
One protest against Google's decision to offer search in China while agreeing
to that government's censorship led one prominent blog to discard...
Google
Sponsors Anti-Badware Campaign
Google has added its name to a list of sponsors that includes Lenovo and Sun Microsystems,
all of whom are joining an initiative to fight "badware," a collective
term for spyware, malware, and adware.
Sale
Of Sex.com Breaks Records
Sex.com, a domain that's been passed around a bit in its checkered history, was
sold to an anonymous group of business partners for a reported $12-14 million
in cash and stock...
Google
Plays With Search Result Pages
A report has begun to circulate that Google's vaunted minimalist results pages
now display graphs on the left side of the page.
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While taking a break from the activities at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland,
Google co-founder Sergey Brin talked about Google.cn and the growing kerfuffle
over Google's acquiescence to China's censorship demands.
Editor's Note: Have Google and its American-based search competitors
paid too high a price for entry into the Chinese market? Can their presence truly
effect change by virtue of being available in China? Tell us more at WebProWorld.
 Fortune
Magazine's David Kirkpatrick managed
to grab a few minutes of Brin's time in Davos, Switzerland, site of the World
Economic Forum Summit. The conversation quickly turned to Google China, where
Google's acceptance of Chinese government controls on what citizens can and cannot
search has drawn comments and complaints from a range of people spanning from
bloggers to Congressional representatives.
Brin said he believed Google is "doing the right thing" with their work in China:
"We ultimately made a difficult decision, but we felt that by participating there, and making our services more available, even if not to the 100 percent that we ideally would like, that it will be better for Chinese Web users, because ultimately they would get more information, though not quite all of it."
He also noted how Google blocks content in the US when it receives a DMCA request; the search engine also blocks queries for Nazi-related topics in Germany and France. That led to this exchange between Brin and Kirkpatrick:
Brin: ...we also by the way have to do similar things in the U.S. and Germany. We also have to block certain material based on law. The U.S., child pornography, for example, and also DMCA
Fortune: You actually actively block child pornography?
Brin: No, but if we got a specific government request. If a third party makes a DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) claim that another party is violating copyright, and that party is not able to counter, then we are obligated to block that.
In France and Germany there are Nazi material laws. One thing we do, and which we are implementing in China as well, is that if there's any kind of material blocked by local regulations we put a message to that effect at the bottom of the search engine. "Local regulations prevent us from showing all the results." And we're doing that in China also, and that makes us transparent.
Falun Gong practitioners and human rights activists will likely be surprised to find their work lumped in with kiddie porn and Nazism. Topics like "Falun Gong" and "human rights" get blocked routinely in China.
Kirkpatrick then obtained an opposing viewpoint to Brin's position from Human Rights Watch leader Ken Ross, and noted his opinion on the subject:
I'm sure Google justifies this by saying it's just a couple of search words that people can't get to, but it's very difficult for Google to do what they just did and avoid the slippery slope. The next thing they'll do is ask them to tell them who is searching for "Taiwan" or "independence" or "human rights." And then it's going to find itself in the position of turning over the names of dissidents or simply of inquisitive individuals, for imprisonment.
Ross suggested that the search engines could face down China over censorship if they band together. That isn't going to happen, as none of the big search engines want to yield the promise of multi-billion dollar profits from the fast-growing Internet user base in China to homegrown efforts like Baidu, who do not have a problem following government dictates on content and search.
About
the Author:
David is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business. |
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The Subpoena Thing: Gov't Keyword Research
 By
Andrew Goodman
It's time to say a few words about why the government's request for search query data bothers me. As he so often does, Danny summarizes a controversy nicely.
The FAQ at CNET is also useful.
To be clear, if Google complies in a fashion similar to what AOL and Microsoft have already done, they'll be handing over search query information that has all the personally identifiable material stripped out. That in itself is unsurprising and uncontroversial because it's info most of us can dredge up on demand, or at least approximate. And as Danny points out, anyone who's taken a tour of the Googleplex has enjoyed a variety of live search displays along with their M&M's.
Indeed, I regularly give people plenty of tips on how to gather such information for themselves for market research purposes. It's called keyword research! You can use tools like Wordtracker, which arguably make use of metasearch data from companies like Infospace. Or you can create your very own AdWords account, run it in real time, and discover how many impressions selected queries get in a month.
What you can't and shouldn't be able to find out is who is doing the searching.
Unfortunately that comes back to the ever-blurring line between search personalization
and "convenience of user accounts" and the invasion of privacy. The major portals
are glib about gathering all this info. Maybe the government wanting to look at
it should be a cold splash of water in the face for Google: now you know why we're
so concerned about you looking at it.
Read
the Full Article
About
the Author:
David is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business. |
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A Question of Ethics?
Because the concept of ethics hardly comes up when dealing with this growing electronic
market place that is the Internet, when someone asks whether or not a choice they
are contemplating is ethical, especially when it comes to a situation that could
be beneficial in a financial sense, you tend to notice.
Such is the case with poster Reesa
Marchetti. Reesa was approached by one of her client's competitors, asking
for a similar web design package. What would you do in such a situation? Would
you "respect" your current client and deny their competition or would
you embrace your client's competitor and provide them with the same service?
Discuss how you would handle such a situation here.
See you guys tomorrow.
|| Chris||
My
Client's Competitor Wants my Services
I have been contacted by an e-merchant who is in competition with one of my current Web design clients.
I'm not sure if this an ethical issue at all, but now that my Web design business
has become successful, this situation is starting to occur. My design packages
include marketing consulting and search engine optimization.
The competitor wants me to do for his site what I have done for my existing client;
that is, help him get higher search engine positions and make more money. If I
were a talent agency, I would book competing models and actors without hesitation.
So why do I feel queasy about accepting this new client, just because he's in
competition with my existing client?
I would love to hear form other web designers who have encountered this situation.
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WebPro Question: |
Which Google features do you use for SEO?
- KeithO
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