Google a Political Target?

[xfelix]

Today I began to think about how politicians today are slightly skewing history text books to promote their political agendas. One good example I am aware of is I remember in High School learning the founding fathers created the Constitution to be a living breathing document. The truth is the founding fathers did not intend it to be that way. This is frightening and reminds me alot of the book 1984, where the main characters job was to change history books and news paper headlines, to merge with current politics. It really just gets down to how Information is distributed, and I'm certain that Google has probably already been targeted. For if you search for certain key words such as "Global Warming", "Media", "Health Care Reform", etc.

Although google is an excellent source for learning about computers and math. I would say that when learning about politics and history, the best piece of information is the direct source such as reading the constitution directly or Declaration of Independence.

[DamegedSpy]

mhhh.

Damn, let me see the options:
1.-Make a campaign to make Google Neutral.
2.-Make our own Crawler/Spiders.
3.-Go to the moon and play golf on it.

[sanddbox]

Today I began to think about how politicians today are slightly skewing history text books to promote their political agendas. One good example I am aware of is I remember in High School learning the founding fathers created the Constitution to be a living breathing document. The truth is the founding fathers did not intend it to be that way. This is frightening and reminds me alot of the book 1984, where the main characters job was to change history books and news paper headlines, to merge with current politics. It really just gets down to how Information is distributed, and I'm certain that Google has probably already been targeted. For if you search for certain key words such as "Global Warming", "Media", "Health Care Reform", etc.

Although google is an excellent source for learning about computers and math. I would say that when learning about politics and history, the best piece of information is the direct source such as reading the constitution directly or Declaration of Independence.

Tell me: What gives you the idea that the U.S. constitution does not have measures in place to ensure that the Constitution can be changed to reflect society?

Also: What gives you the idea that Google is modifying search results to help press political agendas?

I'm not criticizing you - I'm just wondering how you came to that conclusion.

[faazshift]

Adding to what sanddbox said, Google is against that sort of thing. Thats the biggest reason they decided to stop censoring things for the government (the attack just nudged things over the edge). If they are so against that sort of thing, why would the do it for the US (without even having governmental pressure to do so)? Besides, it would only mean more work on their parts to shape the results a certain way. It just seems to me that Google would have to go pointlessly out of their way and keep things very secretive to pull something like this off unhindered.

[sanddbox]

3.-Go to the moon and play golf on it.

That option sounds epic. Can haz?

[thetan]

Thats the biggest reason they decided to stop censoring things for the government (the attack just nudged things over the edge). If they are so against that sort of thing, why would the do it for the US (without even having governmental pressure to do so)?

Naive. I disagree with that completely. This is only what Google would want you to believe. Google threatening to stop censoring search results for google.cn (they haven't done it yet) and pulling out of china completely is nothing but a ridiculous PR campaign.

First of all, the share of the search market, no matter how you slice it, is owned by Google in China. Now before anyone jumps at me and says "z0mg, not true, they only have < %40 share of the market with Baidu being the major player", I must remind you that Google owns Baidu via an acquisition back in 2004. So yes this means they own almost the complete market share for search in China (interestingly enough it means Google also directly links to pirated material on purpose as this is one of the main functions of Baidu).

When it comes to Google threatening to uncensor search results through google.cn if China doesn't change their laws. This is complete BS and more PR bullshit. The fact of that matter is if Google were to do such a thing, that would be the day that every last Google.cn employee got arrested for treason. Now i don't know about you but that doesn't sound like "Don't be evil" Google to me. So i'm calling bullshit on that threat.

Anyways, Perhaps i'm the only one who cares about the fact that Google was indeed compromised (lol, via an IE6 exploit, now why would anyone run such a criminally insecure program at such a sensitive point in a network is completely beyond me). The bottom line why Google is playing these PR games with china now is because "China h4x0r3d their cloud". Now a breach in their security, means the cloud isn't safe, means their entire business model fails. So pulling a PR stunt like this is a natural move for them to deflect such negativity towards the cloud. However, it does seem to me atm that Google is probably the only company capable of being compromised and turning it into a positive thing (hell even winning over more favor in the end through human rights activists)

Funny the government (US) got involved a bit. btw, did you know this was the first time in history that any US Secretary Of State (Hillary Clinton) has ever publicly addressed internet freedoms. Also, i remember reading a while back that something like ~40% of all Documents of State Governance in the US is hosted and maintained via Google Apps (their in the cloud office suite). Am i the only one that finds it a bit un-nerving that such a huge corporation has physical control over ~40% of all State Governance documents?

Look, bottom line. Whenever a major corporation pulls a stunt like this, you have to stop, sit back and observe the facts as they flow in and ask yourself "why are they really doing this?". Never take their word for granted, because if they could they'd let you die for a profit (oh wait the US health care industry already does that >_<, my bad).

Look, this is directly from Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google in an CNBC interview back in december.

"If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place," Schmidt said. "If you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines - including Google - do retain this information for some time and it's important, for example, that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act and it is possible that all that information could be made available to the authorities."

So this is saying, sure it's ok for Google to hand over account info to US Govt through a subpeona, it's ok for Google to censor search results in india and other places, yet for some odd reason out of the blue Google suddenly has a human rights issue with China?!?!?!? lol, this only just further emphasizes how big of a mind fuck PR game Google's peddling with this. However, it's working for them and success is success, guess i can't argue with that.

[sanddbox]

It's funny, because as soon as faazshift mentioned Google refusing to censoring China's search results I recalled one of Thetan's rants on irc =) (To be clear - I'm not disagreeing at all - I just found it funny)

Anyways, back to the topic at hand, I'm still waiting for any small amount of evidence confirming the OP's point of view. In addition, how much will the Constitution really tell you about history?