March 01, 2006 | Wednesday

Who’s Watching Who: Search & Privacy at SES

By Dylan Thwaites, CEO in Events |News |Search Engines |Google

Did you know that Dick Cheney’s ranch is not on Google Earth? Apparently Google Earth has black holes where someone ....mmmm let me guess...... has had the data removed. As a searcher I am not told that any information is missing or why it is missing or indeed who ordered it to go missing.

Professor Tim Wu of Columbia Law School makes the point that governments need to control the politics of information, so search engines are forced to take a political stance whether they like it or not. There are many examples:

The most obvious is when China forced http://www.google.cn to provide politically correct (in Chinese terms) answers to queries such as “Free Tibet”. This rankles me not because of any quasi-moral judgement, but because of the hypocrisy of the “Don’t be Evil” mantra. But I bet the Dalai Lama still uses Google.

Meanwhile, the French government creates its own national search engine to rival Google. They spend millions of taxpayers Euros in an effort to stop their youth becoming Americanised - what a waste of effort. And don’t bother looking for your favourite Nazi sites, France and Germany force Google and Yahoo to remove access to all Nazi sites. What happened to free speech? Its the same as burning books, like the Nazis did.... bet you can’t find that on the internet in Berlin.

It’s not just government censorship, the search engines do it too. I thought it was an urban myth, but no its true - Google bans beer adverts yet allows wine ads. Indeed, Google doesn’t think you should gamble, smoke or take drugs. But I bet Pete Doherty still uses Google - he just can’t remember it.

Wherever you are in the world, knowledge is power, and sadly censorship is the exercise of that power. These powerful people - governments or search engines - invariably claim to be protecting us. Doing it for our own good. I guess we should all just be glad that so many powerful people are trying to help us to live happier lives.

...Right?