Google To Block Piracy-Related Terms From Autocomplete 275
An anonymous reader writes "Google is making changes in the way it presents web search results to try to exclude links that may be tied to pirated content. In a move enthusiastically praised by the RIAA, Google says it will not include terms closely associated with piracy from appearing via autocomplete. The company acknowledged that it can be hard to know what terms are being used to find infringing content, but 'we'll do our best to prevent Autocomplete from displaying the terms most frequently used for that purpose.'"
Less Popular (Score:4, Interesting)
Replacement for Google? (Score:3, Interesting)
I quit using Yahoo back in the day because it impinged on my give-a-damn. Too many ads, not enough do-what-I-want simply, quickly, or silently. Google's bare bones front page was exactly what I wanted in a search engine.
Is there any sort of replacement for Google in that same vein? A bare bones search engine I can set as my home page and expect not to be impinged on by irritants like someone else deciding what I may search for?
Also, does it mean anything for the non automated search function of Google's HTTPS feature?
Guilt by association? (Score:4, Interesting)
They're associating strongly here with the RIAA and MPAA, organizations which are widely considered to be evil, and making decisions based on their input.
I'm not going to say flat-out that Google's being evil, and breaking their ethics policy, but if you lie down with pigs then you may well come up covered in mud...
Good move indeed (Score:5, Interesting)
In fact, they should remove them from search results altogether--why, that would send the MAFIAA into paroxysms of joy, right?
Reasonable (Score:4, Interesting)
This seems pretty reasonable; when you search for the name of a popular movie (for example), " torrent" is almost always one of the top autocomplete hits, and the results you get from that are usually garbage or worse. There's probably a ton of people getting trojans and viruses, or scammed, by these sites by mis-clicking. They're not making it any harder to access this stuff intentionally, they're not being filtered from the actual search results.
Re:google can... (Score:4, Interesting)
I love it when people get upset at the "information wants to be free" adage, but I don't even think it's very wise. The real kicker is that, thanks to Internet, information is in fact free for most intents and purposes. The risk of getting into trouble is absolutely negligible, and it will only get smaller as the pipes get thicker and copying gets cheaper. And they will get thicker and cheaper, even though Internet's performance level is already obscene when compared to the time most of us were born into.
Re:google can... (Score:5, Interesting)
shopping shopping shopping!
no kidding.
I search for specs or schematics or howto's and I get "BUY ME!" crap links.
I search for datasheets on chips and I get junk china sites claiming to be able to get any part I want. (fake ones from china, sure...)
its really hard to get real content from a google search now. and we've been slowly conditioned (cooking the frog) to accept that the search results are dumbed down more and more over the years.
google's day in the sun is over. they do have name recognition but no one really belives, now, that their search is any better than any other.
the auto-complete, bouncing text and blinking things only drive the nails in the coffin down harder.
when you need a pre-processor to a search site, you know they lost their mojo.