Rx_Recruiters - 6:36 am on Aug 3, 2005 (gmt 0)

That is very interesting.... If the 2 out of 10 sites that are no longer in Google are in the ODP, they should be in the Google directory clone of the ODP data, and thus indexed in the engine itself.

Hmmmm .... it is also very hypocritical to me that Google:
1)uses duplicate content (the ODP)
2)Has duplicate sites with duplicate content (the numerous data centers, IP addresses, and country sites)
3)Scrapes pages for it own content (what do you think SERPs are - nothing but scraped pages!)
4)Duplicate and copied content via news.google site and News search page.
5)Saves and copies other sites original content on its own servers (cached pages)without permission.

Not that any of that matters, they have the power to do what they want to do. A case of "Do what I say and not what I do".

I don't have as much problem with algo changes, but by completely removing sites, they are taking away the democracy of allowing sites a chance to compete and denying the end user the chance decide for themselves what site they want to visit and whether it is relevant. And in trying to decided what sites to censor, they took out many good sites in what is being referred to as "collateral damage".

Google used to believe that they used democracy via links, (among other things), to decide which sites were important. Now, there is no way they can say that - as sites are being completely censored without reason - a very un-democratic process.

On another note, I heard rumor of at least one TV news outlet that reported about Google censoring sites, and I believe that they Google "wouldn't return our calls for comment". It was probably the site of one of the reporters family members, but they mentioned the site name on the news, and it definitely was not a scraper.