Article: Googlelashing

from TechCentralEurope

[anallawalla]

Link to article here [techcentralstation.be]

Googlelashing

by Sandy Starr [ 03/07/2003 ]

For a long time, internet users and commentators had nothing but praise for the increasingly popular search engine Google. But today, Google tends to come in for trenchant criticism. Why?

[fathom]

Google has formed lucrative partnerships with companies and organizations around the world, including Amazon.com...

I have been seeing a fair amount of Amazon pages getting into the top 5 position.

Appreciating that they do have a vast backlink network, but these have abruptly appeared.

Don't know (think) this means anything (yet) but it is suspicious.

Especially with a URL like:

htt**************.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-url/index%3Dmerchants-index%26node-subject%3D1199354%26field-merchant-id%3DA1VC38T7YXB528%26dispatch%3Dbrowse%26results-process%3Ddefault/ref%3Dtar%5Fhp%5Fcs%5F7%5F3/002-*******-******* at 233 characters! ;)

[chiyo]

Very good article. Making a "moral stand" does invite criticism in many areas.. mainly for the possibility of hypocrisy, and the fact that morals are always defined by culture, time and space. The example of banning tobacco and alcohol ads and not porn is a good one. I'm sure p*** brings in heaps of income, so is google a ****, much like those australians who bought shares in the world's first listed brothel? I/m not saying that, but it does invite that sort of criticism, especially as they are making decision. Now going to the country dimension, if Google was run by Moslems i guess they would, like google, take a moral stand and ban alcohol ads, but also p*** and any products with pork or other non-halal items in them. In China it looks like they are filtering for human rights and opposition groups.

Once you make a moral stand, you become a sitting duck.

For me personally I accept that Google is a Us company run by highly educated people with Western middle class trendy values. dont agree with all of them but accept people have different beliefs. So its not a big issues with me at present. How they stand on moral values is one way they will be judged by many, but i dont think we should be fooled that "morality in practice" is not affected by revenue! The porn/tobacco/alcohol issue may be an illustration of this.

[Powdork]

htt**************.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-url/index%3Dmerchants-index%26node-subject%3D1199354%26field-merchant-id%3DA1VC38T7YXB528%26dispatch%3Dbrowse%26results-process%3Ddefault/ref%3Dtar%5Fhp%5Fcs%5F7%5F3/002-*******-*******

Long url yes, but no '?' and no session id. Until recently I would have said they are getting better and better at indexing these types of pages as a result of their voracious appetite for information. Now I feel as though GoogleBot is GETting less. Seeing something like this makes me feel as though it is at the expense of an existing html page that is no longer indexed.