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On Thu, May 15, 2014 at 10:43:25AM +0100, Philip Hudson wrote: > Google essentially makes its money from stuff it did nothing to > create. I disagree. Google did a lot of work to create their search engine, which doesn't just collect the content of the web, but indexes it in a useful way. And they're pretty damn good at it. Which is also why I think Google can't just hold up their hands and say: we didn't create this data, we merely write algorithms that parse it. (Which is what I think you're alluding to as well.) > The consequence is that Google search result pages will be tainted by > third-party commercial and legal interventions and manipulations. Well > guess what? They always were. How to deal with that, when, where, > whether and what to disclose regarding interventions... interesting > problems for Google to solve. At least when it comes to legal requests, Google has been pretty open and mentions it when results have been removed. (Typically due to copyright violations.) I wonder if they are able to do that when it comes to these kinds of requests as well. "You searched for 'Martijn Grooten'. Here is the company Martijn works for, here's his Twitter account and here are some innocent holiday photos. We can't show you three pages that Martijn asked us to remove." isn't something I'd like Google to say. Martijn. -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/listfaq