SevenCubed - 8:07 pm on Dec 1, 2012 (gmt 0)

I do not want a web where every statement that someone finds objectionable is removed from the public eye.

Ditto.

But we do need balance and for controllers of search engines to use some common sense when directly approached. These types of confrontations are the growing pains of the internet that is really still in its infancy.

Someone sent me an interesting article yesterday that surprisingly was written in 2006 yet it is very relevant to this topic from the sense that when it happens to one of them it's not alright. But yet if it's the public at large...who cares; was their attitude, and appears to still be.

From within article:

That obsession with privacy may explain Google’s puzzling reaction last year, when Elinor Mills, a reporter with the tech news service cnet, ran a search on Google CEO Eric Schmidt and published the results: Schmidt lived with his wife in Atherton, California, was worth about $1.5 billion, had dumped about $140 million in Google shares that year, was an amateur pilot, and had been to the Burning Man festival. Google threw a fit, claimed that the information was a security threat, and announced it was blacklisting cnet’s reporters for a year. (The company eventually backed down.) It was a peculiar response, especially given that the information Mills published was far less intimate than the details easily found online on every one of us. But then, this is something of a pattern with Google: When it comes to information, it knows what’s best. [Source "Is Google Evil? | Mother Jones"]

I'm not sure if a link out to that site is alright so not included but just searching the quoted source will lead you to it. It's a good article, not full of accusations, just a sensible balance of questioning conduct.