Archive for the ‘Internet News’ Category
Google weighs in on internet filter
Google’s Australian division, has added it’s 2 cents to the debate on the Internet Filter Policy proposed by the Labour Government of Australia to filter all web traffic it’s citizens view and deny access to refused classification or other objectional content.
In it’s blog, Google have openly opposed the Australian Internet Filter, and submitted it’s arguments to the Labour party including:
- The filter would block access to some important content, including some politically controversial content, with Google indicates is vital in democracy.
- It removes choices, claiming that parents will become complacent, under a false sense of security, believing they or their children will be protected from harm on the internet.
- Isn’t effective in protecting children, because the objectional content is often found outside of HTTP websites.
They’ve also stated it will signficantly slow down internet access of large websites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Google’s own video channel, YouTube.
Google has used Youtube as an example, citing it’s Community Guidelines Policy, and self-regulation, and also said that the government should shift it’s focus to user education to help improve online safety.
We at SearchNews are very opinionated on the matter also, we also believe that the filter is poorly thought out, will put burdens on resources, having a direct impact on internet access pricing, and will have a detremental effect on internet access in Australia.
We beleive there are much better ways to protect children and weed out criminals, and that our tax-payer’s dollars can be better allocated to other programs.
The Proposed Internet Filter Policy will be brought before the senate in coming weeks, however it will require support from the Australian Liberal Party to pass into legislation.
We will be watching with great anticipation and hope the outcome is the Internet Filter Policy being shelved as a technological blunder in the history of the Australian Government.
For related information see the following websites:
Yahoo-Microsoft-Bid-Update
In the ongoing saga of Microsoft’s continued attempts to buyout Yahoo!, Steve Balmer, CEO of Microsoft has come out publicly saying he still wants to buy Yahoo’s search company.
In a recent interview by AllThingsD with Balmer at this week’s 2009 Media Summit this week in New York, Balmer has said that Microsoft has made a significant investment in Research & Development into Search, which is something Google has clearly led the way in, but he believes Yahoo isn’t in a position to make such an investment.
Balmer believes that by combining Live Search with Yahoo’s search, the company will pool it’s resources, customers and advertisers together to add scale, and he seems to think therein lies the real value of merging the two businesses, with a goal of holding 15-20% of the search market in the next few years.
Balmer declined to comment on the new Kumo Search product, but did go on to say that search was updated at Microsoft every 9 months.
Latest Google Bomb: Gmail Down
It has been the topic of much discussion recently on news websites and forums: Gmail was down and allegedly exploited by porn sites this week.
Google was in fact experiencing technical difficulties this Wednesday, and given the large number of subscribers, many users were searching for answers to explain why.
In the most recent public case of Google Bombing, Search Engine Optimisers were fortunate enough for Google to be offline long enough for users to start searching for ‘Gmail Down‘..
It seems those opportunistic folks who were triggering the search term and setting up groups in Gmail forums, were directing visitors to pornography sites which has outraged many, and led to some interesting, and perhaps misinformed media coverage.
Google Bombing is a method of black-hat SEO, whereby hundreds of website create text links (or anchor text) of words you want Google to rank contained within a hyperlink, and therefore anyone searching for that particular keyword in Google; or any search engine whose algorithm is similar to Google’s, will list the destination site at the number one spot in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).
One of the most popular Google Bomb references is the search term ‘miserable failure’ which directed searchers to the White House (USA Government) profile page of George Bush. An ‘I’m feeling lucky‘ search would instantly take the user to the site, causing some hilarity and ridicule as the ‘trick’ of displaying the page spread through the web.
Either way, it seems Gmail’s service has been restored, and a few people giggle over the incident, but it reminds us that email services aren’t bullet-proof, even those supplied by someone as big as Google, and with a little black-hat SEO, you can still get to the top of the search engines, although we highly recommend against this.
Google Cannot find this page
This could be the message that you receive when you search for a page deemed inappropriate if the Australian Government is successful in implementing the proposed Internet filters.
The purpose is supposedly to protect our integrity and filter out child-pornography and other illegal websites, and to help prevent access to inappropriate materbut skeptics say it will have little impact on people searching for said banned material, and will likely return fals-positives preventing us from reaching legitimate websites.
Previous legislative attempts to control inappropriate content have required internet service providers to supply NetNanny-like filters that are easily overridden by children who know how to get around such controls, and this next step seems to be a much stricter proposition with a high degree of difficulty in circumventing the controls.
The new filters will be run at border routers within ISPs, meaning that it will be very difficult to view unfiltered content unless you tunnel to an overseas proxy, which only most tech-geeks are capable of doing.
The proposed filters will have a variety of impacts on the way we use the internet, and none of them sound good:
- Internet Service Providers will need to install new software to monitor traffic, and install new hardware with enough computational power to handle the workload
- Internet speeds will likely slow, some say as much as 8%
- ISP Services will increase in price due to the new hardware and technical requirements, and this is an unnecessary increase on Australia’s already-overpriced internet services.
- The government provides the list of what it deems ”inappropriate”
- Filtering of packets may also be an invasion of our privacy.
This proposition is not foreign to some other countries either. In the USA, it has been common for the FBI to look into people’s email in order to ‘uphold national security’, whilst in the People’s Republic of China at 2006, the Ruling Communist Government demanded that Google begin censoring web searches, limiting access to Chinese Citizen’s access to material that the government found objectionable.
In Australia, there are currently local tests being run by IInet, an opposing ISP who is trying to demonstrate that it is not pheasable to run such content filtering. Their cooperation is only to prove that it can’t work.
Filtering of content is currently opt-in by IINet subscribers, but if parliament approves this new bill to filter content, then we could be viewing a restricted version of the internet as soon as next year.
SearchKing is in strong opposition to such internet filters, and enourages all our users to sign up to the online petion at GetUp!