Saturday, November 13, 2010

Google Is Playing Big Brother Role In India

Till now it is very clear that something is absolutely wrong at Google’s end. There has been growing incidences of Internet censorship in India by Google. The do not be evil policy of Google has long been considered to be unenforceable by Google. It is also a controversial policy and many people rightly and correctly consider the same to be just a slogan that is not actually acted upon by Google.

Google has been manipulating Internet search and news search by methods like declaring them “spam blogs”, removing appeared news and search results, preventing news items from appearing, allowing the search engine optimisation (SEO) people to manipulate Google’s results, etc.

Besides there are other act and omissions of Google that goes against the do not be evil policy. It seems Google is not very much interested in the privacy and anonymity of its users. Similarly, anti trust activities have also been attributed to it in the past. Google has also been sued all over the world for its data gathering activities that went far beyond wardriving.

In a trade off between civil liberties and commercial interest, Google has definitely chosen the latter. It is high time for Google to declare its priorities now so that Internet users can form a reasoned judgment before engaging with Google.

Our latest article that has been censored by Google news is titled e-governance and ICT utilisation in India. The winter session of the parliament of India is going on and it is very important to bring to its attention the policy lapses and corrupt practices adopted in India.

It is obvious that government of India would not be interested in bringing these facts before the parliament giving additional ammunition to the opposing party. However, what alliance and interest Google has in this scenario is still not understandable. Google please do not be evil.