Posted on 03/12/2006 11:42:21 PM PST by Jack Black
Google has now begun censoring web results in the USA. Previously they have admitted censoring sites in China. Like the Chinese censorship the sites being cut from the search results are anti-communist.
The following letter is from the web site "The Peoples Cube Worldwide" which is a parody-of-Marxism site.
Google Purges The People's Cube Worldwide
By Red Square
3/10/2006, 10:13 pm
Open letter #2 to Google from the People's Cube (posted on Google.com Help Center at 8:30pm on March 10, 2006
Dear comrades at Google:
At some point, quite recently, our popular site "The People's Cube" (ThePeoplesCube.com) was purged from Google search results. MSN , Yahoo and other search engines still have it - but Google has erased/blocked any link to the site in its database. One can still find links to us from other sites - but not even one from Google to ThePeoplesCube.com. We tried American, French, German, British, Australian, and Russian versions of Google - they used to give us traffic only a few days ago - but all we got was the same line in various languages: Sorry, no information is available for the URL thepeoplescube.com. And if we clicked on Find web pages from the site thepeoplescube.com we got Your search - site:thepeoplescube.com - did not match any documents.
The first time we saw this line it was written in Chinese - (Chinese characters not supported in browser removed by poster for clarity - JB)
We used to look up The People's Cube for fun in the communist-censored Google China only weeks ago - and reported it on our site in a story called Google's Great Leap Forward. Of course our site was blocked by the Chinese government, with Google's consent, along with legions of other Western sites - but we couldn't imagine that only a few weeks later we would get the same results in English. The last time we checked we still lived in the United States - not China - but hey, whoever controls the information is the boss.
If it were a glitch in an algorithm it might throw our rankings back to the end of the line - but this is a total removal. We suspect it is also a deliberate removal - much in the spirit of 1984-style historical revisionism - removal of a "people's enemy" from life and history. Sergei Brin's Russian parents might tell him stories of people in Stalinist Russia disappearing, along with all their pictures and records. "Out of sight, out of mind" - translated into Russian and then back into English, the idiom turns into "invisible lunatics." That also describes The People's Cube's search results in Google.
We can only think of three reasons for this:
Google is retaliating against sites that ridiculed its Google China project.
Google has begun to implement its Google China policies in the rest of the free world.
A left-leaning Google employee who's got access to the database was suffering a nervous breakdown over the mockery of Marxism on our site, and so he or she dastardly removed/blocked The People's Cube, hoping to "improve" the public discourse by silencing the competition.
You tell me which one it is.
The People's Cube is a business corporation selling products on the Internet. A drop in traffic, caused by a malicious tempering with search results, has affected sales and that gives us grounds for you-know-what.
We'll start by posting this letter on our site and wait for your reply. We'll gladly drop the matter and similarly drop this post into the "memory hole" if we get a quick response from you and our high rankings in Google get immediately restored. An apology would be nice as well.
If you can, we'd appreciate if you pass the following word to our former compatriot Sergei Brin: "Seriozhka, konchai duraka valat' - bylo vremia kogda my toboi gordilis'!" (Sergie, stop making a fool out of yourself, we used to be proud of you!)
Keep the Cube rolling,
Comrade Red Square
APPENDIX I Screenshots of search results in Google as of 03/08/06:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/bloggers/1595341/posts
I just hadda pimp the Cube.
I'm stunned!! Do you know why I'm stunned?
OMG!
the DIRECT LINKS are gone.
no one, not even Google, can purge all the ancillary references to The People's Cube
..Everything but the "www.thepeoplescube.com".
Google has now begun censoring web results in the USA. Previously they have admitted censoring sites in China. Like the Chinese censorship the sites being cut from the search results are anti-communist.
What is the reason why the author of the article didn't report the following -- I assume they'd have received the same results. There's no reason to think they wouldn't have.
I entered the exact phrase "thepeoplescube.com" in the exact phrase box and Google returned about 15,800 results. When I entered the same exact phrase in the any word box it returned zero links. When I omit the ".com" the any word box returned about 16,500 results -- the same result was returned using the exact phrase box.
Seems to me that the author is confused, if Google was going to censor thepeoplescube.com they would have done a much better job of it. Did the author not do the research as I just did and thus is ignorant? Or, did the author do the above research and chose to omit those facts from his article?
The People's Cube is a business corporation selling products on the Internet. A drop in traffic, caused by a malicious tempering with search results, has affected sales and that gives us grounds for you-know-what.
Oh look at that, there's a human finger in my chili !!
Google Alert!!!
Do no evil. Uh-huh. Right.
You're right. I just used Google to search only the domain, thepeolescube.com. It returned zero results. I checked to make certain I didn't do something wrong by entering freerepublic.com to search this website and got a ton of results. I replicated the test and included another web site to search -- tigerdirect.com -- and the results were the same.
you are mischaracterizing things.
the results of an exact-phrase Google search for "thepeoplescube.com" yields the following result:
http://www.google.com/search?as_q=&num=10&hl=en&btnG=Google+Search&as_epq=thepeoplescube.com&as_oq=&as_eq=&lr=&as_ft=i&as_filetype=&as_qdr=all&as_occt=any&as_dt=i&as_sitesearch=&as_rights=&safe=images
Web Results 1 - 10 of about 15,600 for "thepeoplescube.com". (0.22 seconds)
Did you mean: "thepeoplesbureau.com"
SU: thepeoplescube.comthepeoplescube.com ( 21K ). Satire · English. revividus revividus revividus. SU: thepeoplescube.com. People who like this page. iriska iriska iriska ... www.stumbleupon.com/url/www.thepeoplescube.com/ - 20k - Cached - Similar pages
RoseD1's StumbleUpon FavoritesFile Format: Unrecognized - View as HTML ... http://www.thepeoplescube.com/images/mick.jagger_jail.jpg http://www.stumbleupon.com/url/www.thepeoplescube.com/images/mick.jagger_jail.jpg ... www.stumbleupon.com/syndicate.php?stumbler=561019 - Similar pages [ More results from www.stumbleupon.com ]
THERMBLOG: FROM THEPEOPLESCUBE.COMFROM THEPEOPLESCUBE.COM. No comment needed: NEWS THEY DON'T HAVE TIME TO WRITE ABOUT: Senator Durbin apologizes to Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot ... therm.blogspot.com/2005/07/from-thepeoplescubecom.html - 21k - Cached - Similar pages
Communists for KERRY... in which they thoroughly fill the gigantic shoes of the erstwhile KGB, picking up Stalin's methods and networks. Full Story on ThePeoplesCube.com >> ... communistsforkerry.com/ - 101k - Cached - Similar pages
Communists for Kerry - Ask A CommissarFurthermore, I denounce the next attempt at instilling Kommunism; The People's Cube. Do not go to www.thepeoplescube.com they will try to brainwash you into ... communistsforkerry.com/GPU/viewtopic.php?t=40 - 61k - Cached - Similar pages
Courttv.com Message Boards - Search ResultsPreview:, Two important pages to check out [url=http://www.thepeoplescube.com/]The People's Cube-Correct Opinions For Progressive Liberals[/url] ... boards.courttv.com/search. php?action=finduser&userid=78640 - 64k - Cached - Similar pages
America Takes Off Gloves, Puts on Brass Knuckles [Archive ...http://www.thepeoplescube.com/images/gloves_off_parkinglot_sm.jpg"You punks ... http://www.thepeoplescube.com/red/viewtopic.php?t=437&start=0&postdays= ... freeconservatives.com/vb/archive/index.php/t-30600.html - 14k - Cached - Similar pages
Irish-American Republicans - Home Pageminchconstruction.com irishgop.com Kazakhstanis Against Borat brooklynyr.com communistsforkerry.com ThePeoplesCube.com Che-Mart.com fcbcapparel.com ... irishgop.com/ - 10k - Cached - Similar pages
etc...
no, wait - here's a screen-cap:
As is plainly evident - there are NO DIRECT LINKS to the Cube's website.
NOT EVEN GOOGLE can purge all ancillary references to the Cube from its searches.
I'm not sure this is going to be readable. If not here, is the Link .
At a glance, I do not see anything out of the ordinary.
Yup, we use Clusty too.
By Red Square Sat 11 Mar, 2006 19:35
Latest updates:
Comrade Otis emails me with this:
Quote
I have found one search that'll take you to The People's Cube. If you go to Google Image search and search for the image - peoples cube - (not - people's cube - won't work with the apostrophe) one of the returns is Groupthink :: The People's Cube. This will take you to The People's Cube. Someone there at Google must have missed that one.
Meanwhile our traffic is down by about 50% thanks to the Google embargo.
PittsburghProletarian is correct - Google still linked to us on Friday morning, the stats showed about 100 hits from Google from yesterday - and then it suddenly stopped. By about 2pm none of the world's Google sites had any memory/cache of the Cube's existence left. Thanks again for alerting us, PittsburghProletarian! One can't overemphasize the importance of vigilance in class struggle!
No word from Google yet...
By Red Square Sat 11 Mar, 2006 19:52
A worthy commentary on this issue appeared this morning here:
http://omedalus.livejournal.com/23653.html
I don't know the author but he's pretty good (beside the fact that he's a Cube fan)
Quote Now, let's put accusations of conspiracy-mongering aside and accept the fact that Google is a very Left-leaning organization. We know that, employee by employee, 98% of the 2004 campaign donations from the people that comprise Google went to Democrats. We know that Google Ads preferentially lists Democrat advertisements. We know that Google is willing to roll over for China and help them censor dissident websites but will fight tooth and nail against America's Federal Government in providing information to help combat terrorism. We know that Google News uses extreme (i.e. violent) Left-wing sites such as Electronic Intifata as newsfeed sources.
I recommend you read the whole thing - it's worth it.
By bano Sat 11 Mar, 2006 20:01
WE are still free but not as free as others. All is not lost, "thepeoplescube.com"can be found on Google. One must click on group, then enter "thepeoplescube.com". It is right there!
--------------------
You can still find references to the Cube on third-party sites even in regular search, nobody can remove that - but all DIRECT LINKS to the Cube in Google have been removed - and they used to be in abundance.
-- Red Square
I'd like to see proof that Google previously returned direct links to thepeoplescube.com.
Whatever the the full facts are, I doubt thepeoplescube would have a winnable lawsuit against Google. Seems to me Goggle's fine print protects them.
I have no dog in this fight save for justice. IMO Google being a free service and the fine print protect Google.
I use google.com and groups.google.com a lot and lots of times I have to put stuff in quotes, mostly to limit results as what quotes do is lock in the order of the words.
I've never noticed anything like this though, where you get zero results without the quotes and thousands with. This makes no sense or am I missing something?
See my post #55. It looks like thepeolescube.com has to be in quotation marks.
Meanwhile our traffic is down by about 50% thanks to the Google embargo.
Thanks to Google they had a huge increase in traffic. Apparently what Google gives, Google can take away.
IMO Google is a DNC-leaning company from the ground up, which has recently bedded down with Red China.
As a private company, they can do whatever the hell they like within the law. Nuking the Cube is *probably* legal.
Doesn't make it "just"
What we are doing here, and what we may do within the laws (en-masse as only FReepers can) will be JUST.
freedom, baby! it ain't just for Donk shills anymore!
and, because of factual reporting of Google's assinine ChiCom sycophancy, FReepers and other conservative groups can give back far more than Google ever gave.
see the parallel logic, Zon?
moreover, Google is a traded stock.
we are not obliged to like Google's actions, and we are not obliged to avoid harming Google's stock value as an expression of our displeasure.
free markets and public opinion, baby!
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