google - does it scare you?

[nellie]

I learned tonight that Google is censoring the information it provides to Chinese citizens doing searches. If I understand correctly, certain key words will keep a certain site or page from coming up in the search results.

This concerns me. My first thought was, oh my god! if they can do it there, surely they can do it here. Why, the government is already listening in on phone calls and monitoring emails without a search warrent - what's to stop them now? As I see it, the government has started it's slippery descent down the path of denying us our constitutional rights "for our own good."

Then I thought, thank goodness I made sure my children know how to research outside of the internet.

Lastly, I pondered how many people live in China, and how this censorship could ultimately give an entire population (once they're all hooked up and "searching") a very scewed perception of the world in general or certain things in specific.

I admit to being naive sometimes. Does someone want to tell me why I shouldn't be concerned?

[socks]

The censorship's been going on for over a year nellie. The Chinese government imposed the demand for the filtering, after shutting Google down at one point. It came back up, with some things being left out, Google cooperating with the Chinese gov't. The alternative would have probably been a complete ban of the service where Google would have pulled the plug itself. It appears they went with what the gov't. would allow for now with a view to the future.

One of the biggest complaints seems to be that Google projects a pretty progressive image but has decided to work around these issues. Here's a good write up HERE on wired.com that covers some viewpoints.

Searching the internet with Google isn't foolproof though and never has been, there's limits, although I think Google works well. Internet information has always been a question of quality, so I think you're right that people need to access that information thoughtfully and with the some care. If we think we can do a search, get some hits and read a few pages and be assured we have reliable information that's wrong. Where's it coming from, who wrote it, what's the background, integrity of what we're reading, etc. - that all factors in when we're looking for stuff.

"Googling" makes it easier to get to some information but of course someone has to have "put it out there" to have it available at all. And one thing it doesn't, and can't really do, is tell us the scope of information of a field we're inquiring about in an easy paragraph. It still requires a logical and persistent approach, "learning". Overall though I like Google, and use it and other search engines.

And there's always the good ol' local library, one of the greatest values in our economy. Universities have killer libraries, too.

Edited January 26, 2006 by socks