Google Excludes Certain Sites out of its German and French Versions

Submitted by pz on October 25, 2002 - 13:05.

According to NY Times, Google has decided to exclude more than 100 sites from its French and German versions under pressure from the governments of those countries. Most of the excluded sites are devoted to white supremacy and nazism.

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platypus matt's picture

Re: Google Excludes Certain Sites out of its German and French V

Submitted by platypus matt on October 25, 2002 - 15:30.

I knew something like this was about to happen. Keeping our search engines free from bias should be one of our top priorities! It was upsetting enough when google announced it was biasing search engine results based on sites that paid them, but this new tactic is the same as censoring.

Danny Sullivan (http://searchengine.watch) is absolutely right--if we can't get to the sites, they might as well not be there.

Today it's white supremacy and Holocaust denial sites; tomorrow it will be all sites that aren't commercial. The time to act against this movement is now or never.

cel4145's picture

Re: Google Excludes Certain Sites out of its German and French V

Submitted by cel4145 on October 27, 2002 - 23:18.

which is worse, though, the bias that occurs because companies pay a search engine, or Google, who resists that model, but tries to follow the legalities of a particular nation.

the question, though, is why hasn't Google omitted all the government classified offending sites from a Chinese version :)