FW: [IP] Re: Urgent Call For a Google At-Large Public Ombudsman

Tue Jun 12 11:51:24 PDT 2007

Dear Dr. Farber:

I ran up against the Google monopoly, when I tried to use their
adsense to sell bumper stickers and other schwag at
AnyoneButBushIn2004.com  I signed up and was getting good traffic,
but within a week, my ad was pulled and I was told my money was no
longer good at Google, because I was promoting hate, just because I  
used the
phrase "Anti-Bush Bumper Stickers".  I altered my ad
verbiage and then they reinstated me for about two weeks, then I was
thrown out again.

This was in late 2003 and I felt censored and could not understand  
what the
problem was.  It seemed I was just promoting a point of view.  Two weeks
before the election I received an email from Danny Sullivan about how
egalitarian Google had become and adsense was the way to go.  I wrote  
to the
SearchEngine guru and he followed up for me...within three days of his
inquiries, they were taking my money again...no apologies nothing.

I will never know what a years worth of traffic would have done for  
my bank
account, because I did not get turned back on until a week before  
election
day.  Interestingly, all my inquiries with Democratic politicians in
that year produced no results, but Danny Sullivan got me turned on in
nothing flat.

Hmmmmm????

Google was able to control the message and my market penetration for
almost a whole year, an election year.  Not sure what the answer
is...being a libertarian, but there is a whole lot of power
concentrated in a few hands there at Google and it concerns me.

Thanks for all the good work you do with this list,

~aw
Anthony at neo-liberalism.org
http://www.neo-liberalism.org

At 03:07 AM 6/12/2007, David Farber wrote:

>Begin forwarded message:
>
>From:
>Date: June 12, 2007 2:26:22 AM EDT
>To: dave at farber.net
>Subject: Re: [IP] Re: Urgent Call For a Google At-Large Public  
>Ombudsman
>
>Dave, please remove my email and name from my email reply.
>
>
>
>
>>How can people who are otherwise liberatarian in viewpoint support
>>an idea like this? Google is  a company like any other...
>
>1) Google is not just a company. If any company wants to be found by
>customers, wants to make sales on the web, or wants to be part of the
>modern world, it has to be findable in Google. People under 35 don't
>use telephone books, magazines, or newspapers anymore. They use
>Google. It's not a choice "to not be on Google". Google isn't a
>company: it has become the infrastructure for the delivery of
>information.
>
>2) Lauren Weinstein writes about the privacy issues at Google. It's
>far more serious than privacy. Very few people understand how Google
>works. There isn't "one Google" and the results you see in your
>search in Miami are not the same as the results someone else sees in
>Seattle. Google constantly adjusts the results according to many
>parameters, incl. user personalization (Google Toolbar), the length
>of the user's search session (you may get different results during
>your session), your physical location, and so on.
>
>There are millions of searches and results, and these constantly
>shift. This means it is literally impossible for anyone outside of
>Google to track the search results.
>
>Results don't appear consistently. They can appear intermittantly.
>Instead of appearing 100% of the time, a result can appear for 90% of
>searches or 80% of searches. There is no way to track this.
>
>It would be easy for Google to slightly suppress a result. So a
>search for a particular company would only appear for 97% of
>searches. That's a small amount, but it is significant for ecommerce.
>This means Google can manipulate the sales and valuation of companies.
>
>It works the other way too. Google can "over-produce" results for a
>publically-traded company. Their earnings and valuation rise slightly.
>
>3) Google's ability to suppress (or enhance) results isn't theory.
>Google has a secret team that suppresses the ranking of people who
>criticize Google. Never complain about Google in Gmail, in a public
>forum, or wherever your comments will be found by Google. Your
>rankings will slide down just a bit. You will lose web traffic to
>your website, your blog, or your company.
>
>That's why I asked Dave to delete my ID from this reply.
>
>This means that Google doesn't have to blacklist you. Nothing that
>blatant. They just lower your ranking. End of problem. Nobody can
>prove anything, because Google is an informational black hole; they
>never reply.
>
>4) The privacy issues are thus both ways: the right to keep one's
>information private, and the right to publicize one's information.
>It's bad to lose privacy, but what is it when one's public persona is
>downranked by Google and one can't be found in searches? Professors,
>researchers, journalists, etc. can be removed from public access. And
>remember: Google doesn't have to blacklist you. They only have to
>lower your ranking. Or show you in the results only intermittantly.
>
>Microsoft was (and still is) a monopoly. But you can use your copy of
>Microsoft Word to write whatever you like.
>
>Google is a far greater danger than Microsoft. Write your emails in
>GMail, use Google word processor, the Google spreadsheet, Google
>video, or any of the endless Google tools, and they correlate
>everything about you. Google can read all of your emails, docs, and
>spreadsheets. By merely suppressing or enhancing results, they can
>make vast profits, erase careers, and literally control economies.
>This creates spectacular power. No company has ever been able to
>resist that kind of temptation.
>
>Google needs an ombudsman? Definitely.
>
>
>
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