My point about the difference between Google NEWS and WEB seems to not be reaching some people at opednews.com; see the ongoing discussion in the comment thread there, it may help clarify, there's additional links in some of the comments, too
Is Google Censoring Anthrax Coverage by Glenn Greenwald? http://www.opednews.com/maxwrite/diarypage.php?did...
Can you believe NONE of Glenn Greenwald's articles in SALON.com come up in the first 3 pages of a Google NEWS (not WEB) search for "anthrax"??? How can that possibly be, when numerous mainstream pundits have been commenting on and linking to his articles??? Anthrax salon pulls one (1)- along with many articles commenting on and linking to his articles. Anthrax Glenn Greenwald got NONE. I’m not using quotes on anything.
A couple of his articles are top hits in WEB searches: Google WEB: Glenn Greenwald Anthrax
It’s the NEWS searches where they are strangely absent: Google NEWS Glenn Greenwald Anthrax
See the graphic at the bottom of the page to get an idea of how this affects how many people will see his articles, when searching for NEWS on the Anthrax case.
Also, I set up a “comprehensive†Google Alert for "anthrax" on 8/1 or 8/2; it hasn't returned a SINGLE link to a Glenn Greenwald article on Salon (a mainstream NEWS website), and has actually only sent me one alert, period, despite the daily news coverage of the leaks; have YOU gotten a Google Alert with a Greenwald article on Anthrax? Google NEWS indexes a lot of blogs, including OpEdNews.com, even the Diaries; In the past I’ve gotten plenty of alerts including opednews.com articles and diaries.
What a crappy service Godgle runs; as soon as an alternative appears that gives better results, i'm kicking them to the curb (Cuil.com isn't great- yet, anyway. Heystaks.com isn't running yet, but might be good; it uses but isn’t limited or controlled by Google, and is supposed to be less commercially oriented than some of the other multi-search engine services, who I won’t promote by naming them, as they’re generally less useful than Google).
Google has one of the worst privacy records, and they frequently eliminate relevant stories from search results and their Google Alerts service. Is something wrong with my computer? Am I spelling "Anthrax" incorrectly? Or is something wrong with Google? This is making me feel Chinese, and gives meaning to the phrase "Don't be Google".
What are you afraid of, Google? Don’t you believe in free speech and the sanctity of information? I know you’re reading this; you read everything that mentions you. Who are you working for Google? Whatever will you do when consumers run from you to alternatives that will no doubt appear, because you are not providing the service people want; relevant search results? You better calculate if the payoff of a close relationship with Big Brother is worth your getting marginalized and/or going under in the future.
PS Yahoo! NEWS is only slightly better; but as the vast majority of people use Google to search, how do you think this is affecting the public's understanding of the issue?
It actually might not be affecting it a whole lot, given the number of articles returned in search results that link to Glenn Greenwald's Salon articles. The shoddy service will likely be making people start to question what's wrong with Google and start looking for alternatives, even inventing them. This is the information age, and the old disinfo models no longer work, to paraphrase John Albanese
*PEOPLE- please try it yourselves, and set up some Google Alerts to see what results you get, and leave comments here. Google NEWS is different from Google WEB; the News site focuses on news/blog coverage relevant to current events, and this engine governs the vast majority of Google's traffic. Again, I will not be surprised if the results have improved by later today or tomorrow, Google monitors whatever mentions it.