Google Starts Censoring BitTorrent, RapidShare and More?

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There is a story out today that says Google is censoring BitTorrent (and others) from its instant and auto-complete services. I personally can't verify this because nothing seems to be blocked on any of the computers here. Is it censored for you guys?

Without a public notice Google has compiled a seemingly arbitrary list of keywords for which auto-complete is no longer available. Although the impact of this decision does not currently affect full search results, it does send out a strong signal that Google is willing to censor its services proactively, and to an extent that is far greater than many expected.
 
yeah autocomplete for rapidshare isn't working for me. Honestly as long as I can still search for my booty I don't care. Rapidshare and megaupload are anti-piracy anyway. Mediafire is my new mistress these days anyway.
 
Yes...

try these out instead:

how to kid
how to build a bo
methamphetamine form

etc etc etc
 
One thing I worry about is privacy so i might start using startpage.com more. If google censors too much they might kill themselves off eventually.
 
Pirates don't click Google Adsense ads anyway, no loss for Google.
 
They also claimed they were starting to block porn sites whos only intent is to instal malicious malware!
 
One thing I worry about is privacy so i might start using startpage.com more. If google censors too much they might kill themselves off eventually.

Thanks for the link, never heard of startpage.com. If it is as private as they say they will get my usage.:)
 
Thanks for the link, never heard of startpage.com. If it is as private as they say they will get my usage.:)

Nothing is private. Your ISP and your employer (if you use it at work) still know exactly what it is you are looking at. Web pages still place tracker cookies on your system, etc. etc. etc.

There is no privacy on the Internet.
 
You have to press enter to search on blocked terms. The world is ending!
 
How is this censoring? Auto complete is a service and they're just not going to allow those to pop up in auto complete. As long as those results still show up on the regular search, who cares?
 
i'd rather have google censor the sites themselves. now im' pro-torrents.. but when your trying to find legit software, legit stuff.. all you get is crap on google. why not have a de-crapify filter that removes illegal sites from results?
 
Funny thing is it doesn't show rapidshare or bit torrent in its auto complete, but COD4 shows "cracked servers" :p
 
I wouldn't quite call this censorship. You can still press enter to search.

On the other hand, I can't imagine why Google would do this, as you can still press enter to search. I doubt many people who have never heard of illegal file sharing go to Google and start searching, "b...i...t...hey, what's this 'bittorrent' thing? File sharing? Neat!"

They also claimed they were starting to block porn sites whos only intent is to instal malicious malware!

What's wrong with that?
 
They also claimed they were starting to block porn sites whos only intent is to instal malicious malware!

I encourage them to do this :cool:

Honestly from the occasion no voice this will most likely hinder that but from people who know what they doing. This won't change anything really.
 
Honestly from the occasion novice this will most likely hinder

fixed? Took me a while to decode that one, but perhaps the novices have no voice...

Yea... this isn't a big deal yet. I'm not sure why they'd need to do anything about rapidshare... those guys are quite strict as it is...
 
Jeez...Slaves giving they power away...I guess google taken...anyways. If you really want to use Google you have to put up with whatever they decide. I guess it's better than to build your own search engine.
 
bing=crap

wolfram=math homework cheating awesome

yahoo=communists going to put you in jail

google=censorship and publicity stunts (such as pretending to pull out of china, to come again)

not many choices left. you could ask jeeves but he is bankrupt.
 
Not really a big issue, but yeah it doesn't show up for me as well, though funny if you type in "warez" it does actually show up suggesting sites, blogs and forums. WTF
 
Not a big deal, yet. What makes me uncomfortable is where this might take us.
 
Today its blocked, tomorrow loop hole found. Or the pirates will just make a new site! LOL

They will never completely stop warez sites.... ever. It's like the war on marijuana, they are NEVER, EVER, EVER, EVER, EVER (did I say ever?) going to stop it, ever.
 
Since it's only autocomplete that is blocked, one might take the idea that since auto-complete is actually "suggesting" search terms to you, it could be considered that Google is aiding or actively encouraging those searches. Which is something they don't want to be accused of doing. If there are searches that could be considered copyright infringement, then Google likely does not want to be suggesting them to people. If people want to type them out themselves that is fine, but they don't want to be caught actively encouraging those searches. (eg. I'm searching for review a movie, and then it suggests a rapidshare link. I didn't even know you could download movies, but I follow the google suggested search, and violla, thanks to Google I'm pirating a movie that I wouldn't have otherwise".

Yes it's a bit of a stretch, but I'd imagine a large company would want to even avoid the potential for any bit of legal liability.
 
And people still use autocomplete? That almost made me quit using google since that thing SUCKS THE BIG ONE (many tech people agree it wastes 10x more time than saving it, google has their head up their ass on this one)

Thank God someone found the old google link ( http://www.google.com/webhp?complete=0 which does NOT use auto-complete) Yeah, you could change your google settings but I am NEVER logged into gmail so I prefer the non-google account way.

But just recently I found something that's even way better than non-autocomplete (and even the old google search), its an encrypted search I use as my homepage for obvious reasons---> https://encrypted.google.com
 
I'm getting a little tired of the "rapidshare links" spam that is making into google's search results for searches on more obscure games. This is cover up for google's inability to adequately filter out spam sites (in addition to political motives for censorship).
 
I'm not sure what the problem is here?

(I don't use autocomplete/preview.)
 
Thanks for the link, never heard of startpage.com. If it is as private as they say they will get my usage.:)

That's who I have been using on my main PC for a long time now. You can set it up to use HTTPS searching by default and they even give you choice of using their own proxy server when you click on a link that you searched for. You need to change the "family" setting also because by default it is set to filter out porn.
 
F U Google, but I'll still use them as long as they still produce searches to those sites. :eek:
 
Thank god for this. Only need to censor all the spam domains and mankind will finally be able to find out information about fucking laptop batteries :(
 
fixed? Took me a while to decode that one, but perhaps the novices have no voice...

Yea... this isn't a big deal yet. I'm not sure why they'd need to do anything about rapidshare... those guys are quite strict as it is...

So This is just the beginning?
 
I don't see this as censorship at all. If you're searching the web for something, the last thing I'd want to see is a file download in the search results.
 
I really could care less of it doesn't come up in Auto-complete.
The search function itself still functions exactly as before.......not sure why everyone is getting all butt hurt over it, I rarely use autocomplete anyways.
 
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