Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo has posted a thoughtful piece about the power of Google and Google's exercise thereof. I don't know much about the specific situation that led him to compose the post, but it seems to involve allegations that Google tried to silence a website (no, not one of the sites that has been in the news the past couple of weeks--one that is concerned about concentrated power in the hands of corporations).

I do not know enough to have an opinion on the particular incident, but I've read Marshall's writing for over ten years and know him to be a careful and deliberate thinker; I believe that his remarks may be of interest to the LQ community.

Full Disclosure: Talking Points Memo is a news and analysis with a moderately liberal point of view. As I've said before, I tend to avoid political threads here at LQ, this article is not so much political as it is a deliberative musing on economics in the digital age; I think a number of LQers will find it thought-provoking.

thank you.
the article is very in-depth. the pop version can be found here.
i have bookmarked both.

unfortunatley, one doesn't have to go that "high up the ladder" to feel google's censorship - even using a non-standard (whose standards? google's standards!) email setup will result in being thrown in the spam bucket. and that holds true not only for gmail, but also for many others that are also using google's spam filters.

the list is endless and goes on and on...
firefox using google's "bad websites" lists...
websites using google fonts and apis...
etc...

Hi,

So another gatekeeper who will restrict historical information. Not that I support someone like Dylann Roof but to ignore that action by censorship does no one any good. Removal of historical information, historical records, symbols or the like just puts things under a basket. What's next? Book burning, site stripping or blacklisting person's who have a different view point that does not fall into the PC rule set?

This PC crap has to stop. I have noticed my grand-kids education has been liberal adjusted to suit that company of closed thinkers. Unlike having a solid representation for history, civics and world history but to a biased slanted information presented to confuse younger individuals. Feed them maligned information and see the present day outcome.

Do I trust Google? NO! I do not use Google but fall to DuckDuckGo. Sure some of the data results can be from Google when requested but I refuse to even filter Google information.

"Give me liberty or give me death" by Patrick Henry would not meet the modern day PC crowd. Their response would be that was a prejudiced statement against the crown.

What is now happening within the United States of America is not acceptable to me and fellow open thinkers. Nazi's had book burning, propaganda and flat out lies to feed the populace into a frenzied up roar that attempted to take over the world communities.

Not here! PC is not the norm for me but to have open minded discussions without prejudice, violence or forceful actions towards others. By Google or whomever it is not right!
Have fun & enjoy!

Hear, hear!
Very well said!

Duplicate entry. Please delete.

Isn't he's the guy who just got fired for speaking out against google or a think-tank ran by google?

Josh Marshall? No. He's the owner and publisher of Talking Points Memo.

By the by, Jon von Tetzchner, ex-Opera CEO and the founder of Vivaldi, alleges that Google has retaliated against Vivaldi for something of a critical nature Tetzchner said about Google in an interview with Wired: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/09...blasts_google/

By referring to this censorship as "Political Correctness", the censorship is actually being legitimized. Free speech is truly what is Politically Correct.

Hi,

I totally disagree!

PC is generated by person(s) who wish to set a standard beyond the norm or to contradict the norm.

By labeling something as PC does not justify or standardize the action but does form derogatory statements that are not the norm.

Have fun & enjoy!

The weird thing is, I switched search away from Google a little while ago, not for ideological reasons, but because Google's search wasn't as good as it used to be. I was finding stuff on DuckDuckGo that I couldn't find on Google, then the clincher came when Google made one too many "corrections" to my spelling. About 2 weeks later I first read a rumour about internal bullying in Google.

I tend to default to ignoring stuff like that, especially as "some" of Google's rivals have been caught carefully smearing them in the past, but this has got me wondering whether the decline in quality is a result of rot in the roots. If so I hope they can eradicate it - Google has been a good company.

We wouldn't need transparency if we all weren't so human*, are organizations worse than we or the same‽

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i gladly read that google has been fined by an EU commision, and that EU commission received support letters by many US american companies.
read the article, it's not long (attention span of 3rd millenium infotainment consumers...) and made me sigh with relief.

it is also the first time i read that google has a parent company (alphabet) - but on closer inspection, it's really just google. no doubt things have been shuffled around to allow for even bigger market dominance.

Doesn't take too long to see the odd stuff Google does. From my own personal experience their old claim to don't be evil may need to be revised. Maybe one of those claims that has no value. Do the right thing may have no value either. What is right to a monster sized company?

You didn't know about Alphabet? I've known about that for months and I'm just a little old lady! Basically they forked. Now Google officially just owns the search engine and the online sites, and all the new high-tech-of-the-future stuff goes directly under Alphabet.

I'm no great fan of the EU (I voted for Brexit) but it's nice to see them giving American Industry a bloody nose from time to time.

...and i'm just a middle-aged hermit who doesn't watch (*) the news.

(*) including internet stuff