Talk:Google Search/Archive 1

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I've added SWF indexing to file types Google is able to index, important because many believe Flash-based content is hidden from search engines, which hasn't been the case for a while, now. Reference: http://www.google.com/webmasters/facts.html Lewisfrancis 22:12, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

What about recent trademark issues for AdWords? Content needs adding (I couldnt see it in the criticisms)

I have removed the link to the Russian Google Website. Its really irrelevant on the English Wikipedia page. On a more serious note, the criticism of Google seems more like a rebuttal of criticism of google, which is not NPOV. Maybe just some rewording will present both sides of the argument better. Alexs letterbox 06:44, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

As a longtime follower of all things Google, I have never heard of the story of the Google name involving the misspelled check. I know that Google was originally a project known as BackRub (see Google's logo gallery). Would the person who wrote regarding the misspelled check cite their sources?

I'm not that person, but I did hear that it was mispelled on a Fresh Air interview with the founders. BrokenSegue 16:29, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)

11Aug01. On a lark, I searched for "patent nonsense" at Google with the site:wikipedia.com qualifier. I found the wiki article instantly.

Then I looked at Google's cache of Recent Changes. The latest entry is August 15th! It doesn't seem to be evenly updated (its cache of my signature page is from back on June 8th), but I thought I'd point this out as an alternative for those who are dissatisfied with Wikipedia's present search capabilities.

<>< tbc

Yes, this is why Jimbo has put the exact same search as an alternative search on his search results page. Have a look at the bottom of [1] and you'll see the search form there.

Hopefully, we'll be able to impose upon him to do a bit more work for us before Thursday. I am rather sure he'll want to, because this (the NYT article) seems to be a pretty big deal to him (and to me, too, of course). --LMS

Would it be good to send HTML header Expires: as one day after Last-Modified: (Recent Changes) or one week after Last-Modified: (everything else) to hint to Google that some pages update themselves more often? --Damian Yerrick

Damian, I think that's probably a very good idea. I shall study it and implement it if it survives closer scrutiny. --Jimbo Wales

My addition about the name Google being an accident made by angel investors contradicts with the 'Google is a deliberate play on googol' theory. My source is http://www.searchengineguide.com/wi/2002/0211_wi1.html
Jay 00:19 6 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I had cited my source in the talk page when I had changed the main google page. See the posting right above this one. The link is to an article "Google: Search Technology for the Millennium By Paul Bruemmer - February 11, 2002. " Its possible the author has made a mistake regarding the misspelled check theory. You can contact him.

Also a request to all those who discuss in talk pages / discussion pages like these. Please follow the wikipedia convention of adding your entries at the bottom of the page. Also sign your entry with 4 tildes, so it'll get replaced by your name and timestamp. This will help in getting the flow of the discussion.
Jay 11:00, 10 Aug 2003 (UTC)


---

Not yet published In The World according to Google (Le Monde Diplomatique, October 2003) by Pierre Lazuly. --Nerd

Is it possible that the name "Google" might have been influenced by Douglas Adams' "Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy" ?

He had in that book a super-computer named "Googleplex Star Thinker". Bogdan 13:17, 23 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I see there's a new Google bomb -- "miserable failure" -- and I'm finding some interesting stuff on the concept. Can somebody add the concept of Google bombing to the article?

Some links that give some history and good info are Microcontent News, Search Engine Watch, and this Guardian article. Maralinn 13:58, 5 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I have a question. Is www.googlism.com related to Google in any way, or not? (This is the website where you write in a person or place or thing, etc., and it shows what Google "thinks" about that thing.) I don't believe that it is, but perhaps you could clarify that for me. Thanks.

From the website, "Who Googlism has been developed by a talented team of web developers. Googlism.com is in no way affiliated, sponsored or in any way the property of or responsibility of Google.com. However, we do use Google.com for creating our exciting and funny results ... Googlism.com is owned by an Australian company Domain Active". Hope that helps. Gaurav 07:10, 8 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Yahoo! is no longer Google's client? --Hemanshu 12:06, 23 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Yup. Which means the >80% figure is out of date. Anyone knows how to get the latest stats? -- Arvindn 14:29, 26 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Programmer Humor

I'd like to have a section on the article about Google's great humor and strategies. For example, this. (Very good idea in my opinion to get engineers.) Also the 'MentalSearch'(?) linked somewhere on this page. And also the LunarBase, this-thing, and so on. I'd also like to steal..er..find somebody from Google to talk about the so called 'great' work envioronment.

Section Removed

I removed the following section. It's not NPOV, for one. Wikipeida is not a quote repository or original source repository, either. Fennec 20:09, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)

The Google You Don't Know

The following text is a direct quote from jimkarpen.com with the generous permission from the author, Jim Karpen, Ph.D., college professor, Internet devotee. Jim teaches writing at Maharishi University of Management in Fairfield, Iowa.

Last Update: March 2004

These are useful features, features that you want to know about.

Take, for example, the calculator feature. Type in any calculation you want, such as 14*82, and click Google Search or hit Enter, and Google will return the answer (1,148). Google's calculator will find percentages ("20% of 150," for example), square roots, trigonometric functions, unit conversions, and much more.

Or for fun, type in your phone number. If you have a listed number, Google will return your name and address, as well as the amount in your bank account. (Kidding on that last one.) Just to the right of your name and address are links for Yahoo! Maps and MapQuest. Click on that and you'll get a map of where you live.

OK, so maybe you don't like that anyone can type in your telephone number and instantly have your address and a map showing where you live. No problem. Just to the left of the info that Google returns when you type in your number is a little telephone. Click on that, and you'll be taken to the Google help page, where there's a link you can click to be removed from Google Phonebook.

To look up a phone number, just type in the person's name and city.

Google also helps travelers. To look up the status of your flight, type in the name of the airline followed by your flight number. If you want to know the weather conditions at an airport, type in the three-letter airport code followed by the word airport.

A feature that I use a lot now: the ability to look up definitions. You simply type in the word "define" followed by a colon, then a space, and then the term you want to define. (define: boustrophedon) This will find terms and phrases not necessarily in a dictionary but that do exist in specialized lexicons on the web.

You can also use Google to find dictionary definitions. You may have noticed that when you do a search, at the top of the page of results Google will say "Searched the web for boustrophedon." The term you searched for is underlined. If you click on the underlined term, it will look up the definition at Dictionary.com.

I also regularly use Google as a spelling checker. Recently I was writing an article about China and needed to check the spelling of place names. I'd simply type the name in Google. You've probably noticed that if you use an uncommon spelling of a word, Google will say at the top of your results page, "Did you mean: xxx." Because Google's spell check is based on occurrences of all words on the Internet, it is able to suggest common spellings for proper nouns that might not appear in a standard spell check program or dictionary.

Let's stop right here and ask the burning question some of you are thinking: why would I want to use Google as a calculator or dictionary? Think of the time that it takes to dial up the Internet, go to the Google web site, and then use Google. It would be faster to pick up a calculator or dictionary.

With broadband connection, doing these things via Google is always a lot faster.

PLUS, I have a Google search function built into my web browser (Apple's Safari). I don't even have to go to the Google web site. My browser is always booted up, and many many times a day I turn to it to type something into the search box.

Here's good news for you PC users: the free Google Toolbar lets you add a Google search box into Microsoft Internet Explorer. It saves so much time not having to go to the Google web site to do a search. In addition, the Toolbar has other features such as blocking popup ads and filling in forms with one click.

Other Google features include looking up stock quotes, UPS and FedEx tracking numbers, and more. See google.com/help/features.

See labs.google.com for hot new Google offerings being developed. Google Deskbar, for example, lets you search without even opening your browser. Also see us-cert.gov, where you can sign up for a new national cyberalert that warns of computer viruses.

Google changed the look of the site! We need a new screenshot for the article.

Done, but it isn't very clear now, maybe someone could do a better job.
SimonMayer 14:52, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)
I think we should wait for the new design to stabilize before changing the screenshot. They may make some minor modifications based on feedback in the next few days. And the NEW marker for froogle is surely a temporary thing. -- Arvindn 15:43, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)
OK, maybe you should revert my edit.
SimonMayer 17:40, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Also, make sure to use PNG instead of JPEG for screenshots like this, it'll give you a smaller file and better quality. Fredrik 19:15, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Good article! I have just two niggling questions:

  • What is the copyright status of screenshots? The Google main page has a little "(c) 2004 Google" right there at the bottom, and the image page doesn't mention the image's copyright status. But maybe it's well known that an occasional screenshot is fair use or something.
  • In the section on Gmail, would it be more NPOV to point out that other webmail providers' privacy policies on the issue of residual data are variously the same (e.g. Yahoo) or worse (e.g. Hotmail)? Or is it just a molehill?

Securiger 11:44, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Censorship

Two bits cut from the censorship section: the statement that "Young boys in public schools" have discovered that there's porn on the net (probably they're not the only ones to have noticed); and "But unlike the enemies of the political sites above, no one has coerced Google to deem these "offensive search results."" (since it is clear from the rest of the section that being offensive is irrelevant- it's illegal material which Google doesn't allow.) Markalexander100 14:10, 24 Apr 2004 (UTC)

And another bit: "but [the Googlebomb to put the Wikipedia article in first place] did not succeed. Finally, Jewish leadership became involved and Google immediately censored JewWatch.com from all search results". The Wikipedia article is currently the first result when you search for "Jew"; Jew watch isn't in the first four pages (as far as I checked), but it does come up if you search for "Jew watch". Markalexander100 14:14, 24 Apr 2004 (UTC)

No, look closely. While various pages from jewwatch.com turn up if you search for 'jew watch', the main page doesn't. You can verify that they've dropped it from their index by trying http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:jewwatch.com. Definitely censorship. On the other hand, the googlebomb did put jew in first place even before that. Arvindn 15:09, 24 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Actually it is still there: http://google.com/search?q=cache:1tywrxfRAHMJ:jewwatch.com/. And, one reason that it dropped from Google's ranking is that Jew Watch lost its hosting service. Where is the censorship? --Minesweeper 10:22, Apr 30, 2004 (UTC)
Indeed the site is up and running; it was only cut for three days. However, it is not listed anywhere in searches for "Jew," and as said above, its main page does not come up for other searches. I agree, this is censorship. It is selective, but censorship even so.

Edited to reflect that. Also

  • I've changed the section saying racist thoughts are illegal in France and Germany, since they aren't;
  • I cut "Explicit photographs appear in two inch by two inch thumbnails in response to searches for human genitalia, bondage, and bestiality.", since I presume the thumbnails vary in size depending on your monitor, and its fairly obvious what kind of picture you'll find if you search for felching.
  • and cut "sites advocating child molestation" are unaffected, since these are the first to go when you're removing dodgy material. (I tried "fuck children" in a spirit of scientific enquiry, but didn't find much).Markalexander100 15:42, 24 Apr 2004 (UTC)
That kind of spirit of scientific enquiry can get you in trouble!--ALargeElk 10:38, 30 Apr 2004 (UTC)
You can get pro-child love sites in Google, but you have to put in the right terms.

Offensive search results Vs. Censorship

Someone has added offensive title by quoting that Google used it. Where is such message in http://www.google.com/explanation.html ?

Our search results are generated completely objectively and are independent of the beliefs and preferences of those who work at Google. Some people concerned about this issue have created online petitions to encourage us to remove particular links or otherwise adjust search results. Because of our objective and automated ranking system, Google cannot be influenced by these petitions. The only sites we omit are those we are legally compelled to remove or those maliciously attempting to manipulate our results.

And it is clear that Google is afraid of stupid Googlebombing and racists' threats to promote blind censorship. --Rrjanbiah 10:34, 30 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Look at the top of http://google.com/search?q=jew. --Minesweeper 10:37, Apr 30, 2004 (UTC)
Oops. That is a sponsored link by a racist. --Rrjanbiah 10:52, 30 Apr 2004 (UTC)
This section includes two other topics of censorship besides "Offensive search results;" the offensive website for that search (it held the top spot for 3 years) has been up and running (it was cut for 3 days by cybersquatters -- see Jew Watch).
Thankfully, Google no longer lists it there at all. See above discussion.
BTW, isn't this a good thing?! Shouldn't we be glad that political sites we don't like can be censored, for goodness sake?

Two questions...

  1. "Google was founded"...when? this is important because later in that paragraph it refers to "basic techniques then in use"...and it would be helpful to know what year it was. If it was founded on September 7, 1998, then the paragraph needs to be fixed because that would mean the first and the last sentence are redundant.
  2. "...as of March 2004 the service is still not featured on Google's home page, and has not attracted as many customers as hoped." Can someone update this?

Sincerely, Kingturtle 07:03, 7 May 2004 (UTC)

I tried to address these issues. Hopefully things are more clear now. --Minesweeper 16:21, May 9, 2004 (UTC)

"Censorship" again

I took out Kingturtle's recent addition: On May 22, 2004, an images search in Google for "Lynndie England" retrieved zero results, while the same search in Yahoo retrieved 35. Today Google and Yahoo both return 0 results (where I am, at least; Yahoo). Has anyone actually suggested this is censorship, or is this just the section for posting "search results which surprised me"? Markalexander100 02:55, 23 May 2004 (UTC)

I am suggesting it is censorship. Kingturtle 03:00, 23 May 2004 (UTC)

Why?Markalexander100 03:10, 23 May 2004 (UTC)

Because 35 (Yahoo) vs. 0 (Google) is rather odd, considering Google is supposed to be the superior search engine. Kingturtle 03:11, 23 May 2004 (UTC)

Check again. I get no hits on either. In any case, is it not more likely that Google has not updated its Image search index since she became infamous? In any case again, this section should be for reporting allegations that have some currency, rather than contributors on frolics of their own. ;) Markalexander100 03:15, 23 May 2004 (UTC)

Yahoo vs. Google. Her name has been in the media for over three weeks now. If Google Images is that slow, this article needs to mention that their Image service is slow. My allegation has complete currency. It happened today ;) Kingturtle 03:26, 23 May 2004 (UTC)

In order:

  • Your Yahoo link still gives me zero results. What does it show for you?
  • I thought that Google updated once a month?
  • Currency in the sense of being in circulation: is anyone other than you worrying about this? Googlewatch? Wikipedia:No_original_research.

Markalexander100 06:19, 23 May 2004 (UTC)

Yahoo gives me "IMAGES 1 - 20 of about 29 for Lynndie England". Google gives me none. This *is* worthy of comment. (I'm in the UK.) Andy Mabbett 17:54, 23 May 2004 (UTC)

I still get nothing (in Thailand, Safesearch off). Maybe it's different servers being updated at various times? Anyway, still no-one's explained to me what this has to do with censorship. Markalexander100 04:18, 24 May 2004 (UTC)

Google in 2052

In September 2002, Google had a temporary change logo to Goog4e to celebrate its fourth anniversary. In September 2003, it similarly changed to Goo5le. Wait until September 2052. Then we should have Google with 2 digits instead of letters, Goo54e. 66.32.242.104 02:07, 26 May 2004 (UTC)

April fool hoaxes

I could see the above info has been deleted by User:Kingturtle. I personally feel that this information is bit vital to the article 'coz many people still believe the info though they're hoaxes. --Rrjanbiah 05:21, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Many people believe that Google is powered by pigeons? Are these people personal friends of yours? Have they not been taking their medication? Markalexander100 06:00, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)

All people may not be intelligent as you. See for example [2] --Rrjanbiah 06:12, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I followed that link, and I saw acknowledgments of an April Fool. What did you see? Markalexander100 06:20, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Data Mining

Some people have also criticised Google for "data mining", that is, retaining search data, user stats, IP, time and date, etc. and do not comment for what reason they need this data. Should this also be mentioned in the article? Comrade-HW 09:21, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Google software

http://www.picasa.com/ anyone?

Split

  • Does anyone else thinks Google(the company) should be split from Google( the search engine)? The two are seperate entities and althought it may not obvious now, when google launches a new browser, or introduces search software on computers the destinction will become clear. A GOOG article could mention the companies IPO executives and research department. The search engine article would be about Page Rank the name etc. (The only difficulty would be deciding where things like the blogger software should go). I think the split is important to making the article more accurate. It's like having Xerox and copy machine on the same page (Xerox does other things). BrokenSegue 17:23, 29 Sep 2004 (UTC)
    • It's pathetic that I'm responding to my own comment but.... This page is getting really LONG and I think it needs to be sepearated into several pages. I'd like some comments about my GOOG and Google.com split. They can be discussed as independent subjects. Plus if GOOG goes into browsers, desktop search etc. each one really deserves its own page.BrokenSegue 00:33, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)
      • Just so you're not the only one talking about this- I agree that it would be good to divide it that way. Feel free to go ahead. JesseW 01:26, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • I plan on deleting the sections Blogger, Google Browser, Hello, Picasa, Orkut and Gmail unless there are some objections. Those sections have been duplicated at the cororate site and have little relation to the search engine. Many of those have own articles.[[User:BrokenSegue|BrokenSegue]] 20:48, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)
    • Personally, I think Google Services should be split as well. The 'Products and services' section from Google Inc. could perhaps be split as well and joined with this new article (Google Products and Services).

Examples

The examples link to Google, which pulls up this Wikipedia article. Is this what is intended? The Recycling Troll 22:50, 1 Oct 2004 (UTC)

No, why do you ask? They are quite useful regardless of any possible side-effect like that.--Patrick 20:31, 2004 Oct 3 (UTC)

164 external links

See this version for the actual list of removed links

I've removed all but 10 of the above 164 external links. This is completely excessive. These pages do not add information. http://www.google.com/language_tools has links to the domains so we do not need to repeat all those here. Similarly, http://labs.google.com/ has links to their beta services, so we don't need them here. Regarding 3rd party tools, there are hundreds of these but they add nothing of value to an article about Google. Please try to keep these more relevant. Wikipedia is not a web directory. Angela. 18:06, Oct 15, 2004 (UTC)

Google Desktop Search

Why does Google Desktop Search redirect here? It could have its own article... [[User:BrokenSegue|BrokenSegue]] 03:34, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Because no-one has written an article for it yet, and Google has the most info at present. Feel free to write one on the page, and remove the redirect. ;-) JesseW 10:03, 31 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Just wondering if Google server farm is still the world's most powerful supercomputer after the advent of IBM Blue Gene...

I think not...Blue Gene has somthing amazing like 500 teraflops. The article should be revised. What it should say I don't know. Second most powerfull? Very Powerfull? Can we find out how many teraflops google has? [[User:BrokenSegue|BrokenSegue]] 03:54, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Images

I think Zondor's image-related edits to this article were bad. The logo at the top is redundant since it's clearly visible in the screenshots. The rest of the logos add nothing at all. The layout for the two screenshots (both size and placement) is worse. I therefore propose reverting these edits. Fredrik | talk 23:22, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Google Suggest Censorship

Google Suggest stops giving suggestions for the following phrases. All autocompletion is disabled after you type in: sex, porn, xxx, anal, cum, fuck, hardcore, lesbia...(though lesbiens is shown), fetish (though fetisch is shown), vagina( although vagin is shown-what's that ?), (dick cheney is shown) I will not write which words they did accept because that would only help them to complete their blacklist. Greetings --Monoet 20:50, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Do you have a suggestion about how the Google Suggest section of the article could be improved? I previously had listed over 50 blocked words, but someone else removed that sentence (check the recent page history). I agree with them that it is not necessary to list all the blocked words in the article; when I started, I (foolishly) thought the list would be small, but after finding over 50 blocked terms it seems likely that the list might actually be a lot longer than that even.
Improvements to the section are welcome and invited. ~leif (talk)[[]] 21:21, Dec 18, 2004 (UTC)
Just a couple of examples are necersary or waranted. The real question is whether this is censorship at all. They aren't stopping people from search for those things they are just not providing suggestions. This is similar to how they remove explicit content from google zeitgiest. They don't want some granny typing in "pot luck" and getting "porn" as the most common suggestion. Also what does
Google made the unprecedented decision to block the word lesbian,
mean? unprecedented in the history of "censorship"? in the history of the internet? [[User:BrokenSegue|BrokenSegue]] 21:41, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)
"The real question is whether this is censorship at all. They aren't stopping people from search for those things they are just not providing suggestions."
If you look at the suggestions as what they are - automatically generated data - it is clear that many things have been intentionally blocked or removed from the data made available to users. Note in the demo animation, how there are many results for "yyy" and "zzz", but none for "xxx". Users who want search suggestions containing "xxx" cannot have them because that data has been censored. Users who want search suggestions containing the word "lesbian" cannot have them because the data has been censored. In some ways, this is even more clearly censorship than many types of censorware; web-censoring proxies can be circumvented or the user can find an uncensored connection to access a blocked site later, but the google search suggestions for "mispronunciations by " are not accessible by any means because they have been censored. ~leif ☺ HELO 03:15, Dec 21, 2004 (UTC)
"unprecedented in the history of "censorship"? in the history of the internet?"
Maybe both. I admit that sentence had room for improvement, although I do think it is accurate. I have never seen a profanity blacklist used on a large scale that blocked the word "lesbian" (and I've looked at quite a few profanity blacklists recently). Is there any precedent for blocking lesbian that you know of? ~leif ☺ HELO 03:15, Dec 21, 2004 (UTC)
I suppose we will have agree to disagree about whether this is censorchip, but the issue doesn't seem imprtant at the moment because the article doesn't call it censorship right now and since this version is just a beta it could change in the future. I have trouble believing that banning "lesbian" is unprecidented in the history of censorship (there must be some really conservative small town which banned a book because it had the word "lesbian") or the internet. Either way the sentence is unverifiable and the current revision is better. [[User:BrokenSegue|BrokenSegue]] 12:37, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I really don't see how not suggesting people search for XXX can be called censorship- people are searching for results, not for suggestinos, and they can still search for whatever they want. "Unprecedented" is completely unverifiable, even before you start to consider which pool you're talking about (search engine suggestion services? any material in any context?). Maybe "unusually for X", but that still doesn't give the reader much in the way of information. Mark1 04:15, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I just wanted to day, that reading the article, and getting to the words blocked by Google Suggest is insulting - much like a sudden slap in the face. I believe it is enough that the blocked words are mentioned in the screenshot image's desciption, and should be removed from the page. I'd suggest something like that some offensive words are blocked by it (oslt). --217.26.150.114 19:50, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Only Linux?

AFIK, Orkut is in ASP and hence should run on Windows servers. Shouldn't the first line in Google#Physical structure be reworded accordingly? -- Sundar 06:37, Jan 3, 2005 (UTC)

ASP can work on linux.

Domain Names

Does google own one of each of the domain names on this site: http://www.iana.org/cctld/cctld-whois.htm ?

If so, this fact should be included in the article.

38 KB

This article is is nearly 20% too big. Please, someone cut it up into separate articles, do some copyediting and parsing - or I'll do it. Kingturtle 00:28, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)

The 38KB rule shouldn't be hard and fast. We can exceed the limit by some amount. Bandwith isn't as much of a problem as it used to be. As long as we aren't inlcuding unimportant facts or being too redundant. I agree some stuff can be cut, but it isn't tooo bad. Also, recently some pages have spun off from the article. BrokenSegue 15:15, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

NSA + Abu Ghraib censorship

A company randomly "censoring" or "not updating" abu gharib prisoner abuse images is rather different than a government affiliated company doing the same, don't you think? I never bought the not updating their index for 8 months story. What is wrong with leaving in the google-watch.org citations? I know it's a tad redundant but I think the abu ghraib prisoner abuse image censorship should be mentioned additionally within the context of potential NSA involvement/control of google. If I am the only one on this then I defer to the will of the group. zen master T 00:55, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)

But, Google's affiliation with NSA, if any, should be established and this link between its "affiliation" and the "censorship" should be incorporated in the wording during the repetition of the censorship issue, otherwise this becomes redundant. This doesn't mean this article and Google inc. are NPOV. These articles are heavily pro-Google. I can understand this because, this was how I used to be before my current employment with Yahoo! (I don't want to hide my biases.) Several of my questions on this talk page and that of Google Inc remain unanswered. -- Sundar 04:50, Feb 1, 2005 (UTC)
In the above paragraph I only ask Zen-master to provide valid references but for that, the edits would not be valid. I would also like to clarify that my wikipedia edits are made purely on my own volition and not as a representative of anyone. Even so, I wanted to add the info on my employment only as a way of honest declaration. -- Sundar 05:34, Feb 7, 2005 (UTC)
You don't have to "buy" anything about Google's image index--this is something you can try at home. Pick a name of someone who only became famous within the last few months and see if Google returns any images for that person. Examples:
  • Nancy Zerg (defeated Ken Jennings on Jeopardy!; became famous on November 30 when her episode aired): 0 image hits; 3500 Web page hits
  • Margaret Spellings (the new U.S. Secretary of Education; became famous on November 17 when her nomination was announced): 7 image hits, none dated later than August 2004; 38,700 Web page hits. (Compare to 1000 image hits and 219,000 Web page hits for her predecessor, Rod Paige).
Given this, it hardly seems unreasonable that images relating to Abu Ghraib would take a few months to show up as well. It seems to me that the whole "censorship" controversy is a non-story, but even if it remains I agree that the NSA section needs to go. Wikipedia is not a place for rumor and innuendo. --Paul 06:55, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)

google-watch.org is not a rumor or innuendo site I'm afraid, please stop trying to characterize it as such. Are you arguing nancy zerg is as famous as abu ghraib? There should be a wealth of abu ghraib abuse photos on the web because hundreds if not thousands exist. Few websites contain pictures of nancy zerg. I am in favor of combining part of the (original) NSA section with the censorship section, but there are at least two very different aspects to censorship and I think both should be captured in the article: 1) potential random/lazy updating censorship by a corporation and 2) potential intentional censorship by a spy agency affiliated company. zen master T 07:12, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I see mention at google-watch.org of a Google employee who used to work for the NSA, and has a security clearance. You write that "Google has also hired 'former' NSA employees," plural, "where a security clearance was required." Do you have evidence that there is more than one? And what evidence do you have that the one individual we know about was hired because of his NSA security clearance? Also, what's with the scare quotes around "former"? Do you have evidence that he has not left the NSA's employ, or are you indeed simply engaging in innuendo?
As to the other thing, if you don't like my examples feel free to suggest your own. --Paul 03:47, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Hi. I am very, very, very very familiar with Google's past practices in regards to how often they update there search index. Consider for example, my photo gallery here and my photo gallery here. Why, they are almost identical you balk! Yes, that is indeed the case, except the latter has quite a few many more photos. The reason I have this duplication is that I knew that it took exactly eight months before Google indexed my first gallery, and since I wanted to move to a new server and would be unable to maintain my previous dynamic URLs after the move due to a software issue, I've just left them both online until my new gallery is indexed properly. It doesn't matter what anyone here "believes" or doesn't belive, you can search webmasterworld.com up and down and verify it, Google was in the habit of updating their image search index every eight months. --Alterego 07:30, Feb 2, 2005 (UTC)

I agree it's very likely google is very slow to update their image search but why are people so adamant to emphasize that, to the point of completely rejecting the consideration of NSA/government involvement? Why does it seem to matter so much what people "believe" about google? Are you saying, for some reason, that we should encourage people not to think about the possibility that NSA and google have some sort of affiliation? :-) Anyway, enough with the tin foil hat. The google-watch.org site used "former" similarly in their description, I continued that to this article, that should be cleaned up I agree, plurality was also a mistake. Also, I just realized the article may be lacking information on why foreign governments block access to google, that should be added. zen master T 22:21, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I think, majority of wikipedians, like the rest of the netizens, are biased in favour of Google. -- Sundar 05:09, Feb 3, 2005 (UTC)
I would like to clarify that this is a general statement and does in no way mean that I buy the NSA conspiracy argument. -- Sundar 05:34, Feb 7, 2005 (UTC)
I do not understand what the sentence "Google has also hired at least one former NSA employee where a security clearance was still required for the job" means. Are you saying that this employee's job at Google requires that he have a security clearance, or that his job at the NSA required a security clearance? Either way, what is meant by the modifier "still"? Please clarify. --Paul 06:28, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)
If many of the people around the world are prevented from even accessing google because their government blocks access to it, how can they be biased in favor of it? (not having actually used it)
Are you saying because wikipedians are biased in favor of google then the article should be too?
"Still" means the job opening at google required candidates to have an active security clearance for the job, so the former NSA employee still needed his/her clearance to work at google.
zen master T 20:17, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Ah, but hold on: according to google-watch.org (after all these years, still the world's most reliable source for pictures of Sergey Brin in a dress), Google's ex-NSA employee Matt Cutts has been with the company since 2000. The job posting republished on the site is from 2002. No evidence is presented that Google wanted Cutts because of his security clearance. Moreover, the job posting doesn't mention the NSA at all--it merely mentions a top security clearance, something which is held by millions of current and former employees of the U.S. military and government in many different capacities. There are entire employment agencies devoted to placing security-cleared people with companies that need them, typically to work on government contracts that may involve access to sensitive information (which security-cleared people are forbidden to reveal to any uncleared people, even their bosses, under penalty of a whole wide world of hurt).
Nobody is "encouraging" people not to look for evidence of a connection between the NSA and Google, any more so than anyone is encouraging people not to look for evidence of a connection between the NSA and, say, McDonald's. But I think we'd all be better off focusing on things that are true, rather than the infinite number of things that could be true. --Paul 20:59, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)

When I posted the above, I didn't realize there was actually a section in the article about this. This is so unencyclopedic - some fool writes a webpage, A BLATANT CONSPIRACY THEORIST, and it lands on wikipedia in an article on Google? his conspiracy theories have nothing to do with google. its a plain fact that google took 8 months to update their image index. Google hire's lots of exmployees from Microsoft, and since Microsoft gets lots of viruses in their software it is likely that google is planning to write a virus. give me a break. --Alterego 18:24, Feb 3, 2005 (UTC)

I do not dispute that it can take a long time to update an image index, I just dispute the notion we should totally exclude the thought that there could be some sort of connection. I agree google-watch is more than borderline sketchy and I was a tad surprised the microsoft article apparently does not have any references to microsoft-watch.org (which is seemingly much less sketchy than google-watch). However, I believe there are other, hopefully more credible sources for the NSA connection claims, I will search for them. Also, I think we should expand a little bit on the implications of search history data warehouse retention and US laws concerning governmental access to such data, plus information on why many foreign governments block access to google. What does everyone think? zen master T 20:17, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I suggest that both the censorship and NSA sections be removed from the article until and unless someone finds some corroborating evidence for the claims therein. Several people have now presented evidence that Google does not update its image catalog nearly as often as it updates its Web page database, so I think we can consider the censorship question answered in full pending the discovery of any evidence to the contrary.
The NSA connection is even less justifiable for Wikipedia, which aims to be a reliable reference work and cannot afford to be seen as a credulous receptacle for any conspiracy theory someone can dream up. (That the one page on the entire Web that could conceivably be cited as a source for the existence of this connection intersperses its "evidence" with pictures of Larry Page on a Segway and Sergey Brin clowning around, which are not even remotely relevant to anything else on the page, hardly does wonders for its credibility.)
To be frank, I would have deleted both sections myself ages ago, except that I didn't want to make drastic changes to such a heavily-traveled article without discussion. But the more I think about it, the more inexcusable it all seems. --Paul 20:38, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Your position does not make sense to me logically, are you saying because google has a perfectly plausible explanation for why they did not have searchable Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse images we should not even mention the end result, which is: abuse images were not easily accessible for over 8 months which happened to be prior to a US election? Are you asking for *evidence* regarding google's 8 month absence of prisoner abuse images? I believe that is an undisputed fact, right? A plausible explanation can only potentially explain the why of something that happened, it can't make the thing that happened disappear. And now that I think about it, google's news search updates ever few minutes, so it IS actually rather surprising google didn't update their image search for 8 months, given that they are such a highly regarded technology company, but I digress. Whether google was just slow to update or the censorship was premeditated the result is the same and the criticisms both ways are valid and belong in the article in my opinion. As far as the NSA section goes I will search for more credible sources, but I believe the job listings for candidates with security clearances is an undisputed fact as well. What do you think about adding short blurbs on foreign governments blocking google, and on applicable US law regarding spy agency access to google's data warehouse and the privacy implications that entails? zen master T 21:04, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)
If the lack of Abu Ghraib images was due to a technical limitation that was in place long before the incident was ever made public, then even if it's factually true it's not remotely relevant to the criticism at hand. You might be able to make a case for inclusion under a section called "claims of incompetence," though that would be a stretch, but "claims of censorship"? Gimme a break. Besides, is there a person on Earth who couldn't have found the Abu Ghraib pictures through one of the thousands of links to them in Google's Web page database, which is much more heavily used than the image search? If they were trying to censor the photos, they didn't do a very good job.
I explained a few screens up how "security clearance" does not equal "NSA" and how there's an entire industry devoted to placing people with security clearances in jobs where they might be exposed to sensitive information. If that warrants dramatic insinuations about possible sinister motives here, we'd better find out who all these companies are so we can blow the whistle on them, too.
Information about Google playing ball with foreign governments that censor the site in their own countries is of course entirely warranted, I would think, though it's unclear to me what you're referring to if not the information on China, Germany and France that's already in the article. --Paul 23:11, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Eh, Zen-master, the lack of prisoner abuse photos on google is a by-product of a now-outdated business practice. You can equally as well complain that photos from the olympics took quite a while to show up, your local circus, the us presidential election, or anything else. The prisoner abuse photos themselves are not significant except to those with a vested interest in making google look bad. Two immediate possibilities would be a) owning a website that is anti-google and b) working for a competitor of google. the topic is quite simply not noteworthy. --Alterego 07:57, Feb 4, 2005 (UTC)

The prisoner abuse photos themselves are not significant except to those with a vested interest in making google look bad. Two immediate possibilities would be a) owning a website that is anti-google and b) working for a competitor of google.

Alterego, I don't dispute the fact that this censorship section may not be noteworthy. But, I am somewhat offended by your reference to someone working for a competitor of google. If it is a general remark, it's fine, but if it is indirectly directed at me (given that I was a participant in the above thread), then I need to clarify. I work for Yahoo! and have never hidden the fact, in fact, I made it clear right in my first response in this section. [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] are the edits I made to this article. Can you identify atleast one factually inaccurate edit in them? I admire Google for what they are, but at the same time feel that this article should not merely be fancruft and should also highlight the other facts. Also, given my affiliation, my POV will be to tone down the heaps of appreciation on Google (but only based on facts).And I've been extra careful not to change too many things myself and I raised a couple of questions. None of my questions here (Talk:Google#Only_Linux.3F) or in the other article (Talk:Google Inc.#Financing and the IPO) were answered by anyone. These justify the need for vested interests. -- Sundar 09:13, Feb 4, 2005 (UTC)
Clarification: When I say tone down the heaps of appreciation on Google, I don't mean any conspiracy theory should be added, but only that I want to make the article NPOV. -- Sundar 05:34, Feb 7, 2005 (UTC)

Alterego, the existance of the slashdot story is evidence/relevance enough for wikipedia article inclusion in my opinion, it does not matter that the story was subsequently updated to say there is a "reasonable explanation", the determination of whether explanations are reasonable should be left as an excersize for the reader. zen master T 12:30, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I refuse to sit here and continue to argue with two Yahoo! employees about whether or not Google is involved in a conspiracy with the National Security Agency. Maybe it's an ad hominem but this is also freaking ludicrous. From this point, either it goes out of the article or you guys need to begin the dispute resolution process. --Alterego 17:08, Feb 4, 2005 (UTC)

I do not work for yahoo. You are the only one that is directly saying the word "conspiracy", I am the one saying "...the determination of whether explanations are reasonable should be left as an excersize for the reader"; who is being more neutral here? Please point to wikipedia policy that states slashdot and google-watch.org are not allowable sources? zen master T 18:12, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)
My apologies, only one of you works for Yahoo! Regardless, Slashdot reported on the google-watch article, so google-watch is our only source. And Google Watch is not an encyclopedic "source". You only need visit google-watch-watch to find out. Wikipedia is not the place for conspiracy theories, and I repeat, (listen closely), this mans website has absolutely nothing to do with the company Google. If you hear about this on CNN, but shit reported in the national enquirer does not get printed in Wikipedia. If you guys feel it is absolutely necessary to document this in an encyclopedia, and if you feel it belongs in an encyclopedia in the first place, put it in the Google watch article. --Alterego 19:53, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Uhhm, slashdot reported on the fact that google's image index was not updated for 8 months, this is an indisputed fact, right? What exactly do you need a citation for? Again, a "plausible" explanation does not mean the perhaps accidental censorship didn't happen. You may be confused because there are two separate issues we are discussing, only google-watch.org reported the alleged NSA links, whereas the google prisoner abuse image censorship (accidental or premediated) criticisms came from more numerous sources (all just found via google ironically). [10] [11] [12] [13]. Do we need "credible sources" to mention the undisputed fact that google's image search wasn't updated for 8 months? That is newsworthy in and of itself, so the perhaps accidental censorship of abu ghraib prisoner abuse images is just the most notable effect of google's image index not being updated for 8 months, right? How are such facts disallowable under wikipedia policy?
I haven't yet searched for additional NSA connection citations because I was lazy updating my index :-) and because I thought it important to debate philosophically the merits of inclusion here on the talk page first. zen master T 20:15, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Zen, the problem is that you are taking a couple of facts, the substance of which nobody disputes, and using them to jump to a farfetched and reprehensible conclusion without demonstrating that there is a reasonable justification for doing so. It's like saying: "Some have speculated that Mother Teresa may have been a pedophile. It has been widely noted that she spent a great deal of time with children, much of it unsupervised by other adults." Then, when people object: "Are you seriously suggesting that Mother Teresa didn't spend a lot of time with children? That's an undisputed fact! Why are you saying there are no credible sources for this allegation, when I clearly stated that it came from www.i-am-insane.com? Plus there was a brief discussion about it on Kuro5hin a few months ago, so how many more sources do you need?"
Google-watch.org is a single, isolated Web site, run by a crank with an agenda. Anyone in the world can throw up a Web site and say anything about anybody. That does not obligate Wikipedia to give them credence, or even to acknowledge their existence. Something else you need to understand: There is no such thing as "accidental censorship." Censorship, by its nature, is intentional. I did not accidentally censor myself when Microsoft Word crashed before I saved my document. Censorship is an important subject, not to be taken lightly, and a great many people have lost their lives battling it. When you use the term willy-nilly to describe anything that could conceivably prevent you from seeing or saying exactly what you want whenever you want it, you succeed only in diluting the concept and encouraging people to take it less seriously. --Paul 22:26, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)

This could go on forever, so I'm going to be bold. NSA section: gone. Abu Ghraib stuff: gone. Zen, you have indicated that you are looking for additional evidence to support these allegations. If you or anyone else would like to add such evidence and restore the deletions, I will not object, so long as:

  • All evidence provided is verifiable, relevant, and comes from authoritative sources. No original research.
  • The restored passages no longer require the reader to make a large leap of logic to get from the facts presented to the conclusions drawn.

I don't believe these are unreasonable criteria, and I would hope we can avoid an edit war about this. --Paul 22:26, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I am going to revert your change. I believe the ball is in your/your position's court to explain at length why the evidence we already have is insufficient. Have you been reading this talk page? You are going against an in progress talk page discussion, the fact that google did not update their image index for 8 months is undisputed, please justify deleting that half at least? I would be in favor of rewording if you are so inclined. Also note the censorship criticism has been in the article longer than I've been involved so that is not just me. It's also an undisputed fact that google's job offers indicated the need for candidates with security clearances. zen master T 22:43, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I've shortened the part on image censorship since it seemed an over the top explanation for what, considering the lack of authoritative sources, is a minor point. Hiring one former NSA employee seems too trivial to even mention, so I've removed this. It seems to have been put in here because people are attempting to draw meaning from it, but none of that comes across in the article by just adding it as a random fact. Angela. 23:10, Feb 4, 2005 (UTC)

I agree with the removal in the current form, which also included an inappropriate inline external link to Google-Watch. Is there a proper reference for the NSA relationship claim? What security clearance did Matt Cutts have, in what capacity did he work for the NSA? How is that relevant to his work for Google? Only if such information with a proper source can be found, it should be restored.--Eloquence* 23:58, Feb 4, 2005 (UTC)


Good edit. No argument from me. --Paul 00:12, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Phenry, what do you think of the clean up changes I made to Angela's edit? The current version of the article is ok by me, if I find better sources for the NSA claims I will post them to the talk page first. zen master T 00:23, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I added a couple of clarifications, which I hope are acceptable all around. Please note: Sy Hersh broke the Abu Ghraib story on April 30, and the images were found on Google on November 10. That's 6 1/2 months, not 8 months. --Paul
Honored to see I made your blog Angela =) I'd should mention one further reason why this is all hogwash. I have a secret government security clearance. That's right! Valid for six more years. Working for the NSA and having a security clearance doesn't mean anything. The dude could have been a janitor. Corporations like hiring people who have them because it can cost ~$10,000 dollars to get someone properly screened, and it's easier to let Uncle Sam pick up the tab. --Alterego 01:21, Feb 6, 2005 (UTC)

Someone just inserted "The images have appeared in the index since November 2004." The fact of the matter is that the images were in Google's index the entire time, and easily accessible via their web cache. Yes, Google stored the images on their server during this entire conspiracy and made them available for viewing. --Alterego 05:37, Feb 6, 2005 (UTC)

So are you saying we should add "image" before "index" in that sentence to be more accurate? zen master T 18:43, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Not knowing HTML

Google's main page owes its unusually spartan design to its original designers' unfamiliarity with HTML.
Google gained a following among Internet users for its simple, clean design and relevant search results. The simple design was due to the founders not knowing HTML, and just wanting a quick interface.

This was disputed on Slashdot [14]. 10:20, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Good point! I'll change it to "didn’t do HTML". BrokenSegue 13:03, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)

too many wiki links?

I think there are too many wiki links in the article now, if something isn't directly related to the article and/or there is a low likelyhood of someone ever clicking on that link I think wikifying keywords actually detracts from the readability of articles. Maybe it's just me. I'd also guess that too many wiki links would slow wikipedia down. zen master T 15:22, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Well, I have the habit of adding just way too many links in an article, I have to admit. There are many less visited articles that are linked by only a couple of other articles. My point is to provide as many such links as possible. Otherwise, people may never know about their existence. As a result, I created too many links. You may delink some of them. -- Toytoy 15:40, Feb 8, 2005 (UTC)
Links are good:
If you link every related article, people can save lots of time looking for them. And by making all possible links available, you reduce the possibility of duplication.
Links are evil:
The wiki software has to check if they are not dead links. It takes time to generate the page. -- Toytoy 16:11, Feb 8, 2005 (UTC)
If something is not directly related to an article why should it be wiki linked? For example, wiki linking dates that aren't listed in the first paragraph of the article and aren't directly related to the article is overkill in my opinion. How hard is it for users to type "1999" in the search box? Wiki links also really do damage readability when excessive. wikipedia needs a tool that shows articles ordered by number of wiki links, or something like number of wikilinks per 1k of article text. It's going to be especially slow for articles that are modified frequently. zen master T 17:09, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Overlinking is not a crime

Some links may be of no use to you, but it is not always so to others. Please do not mass murder links.

There are at least five types of links:

  1. Directly related:
    1. Google is a U.S.-based search engine owned by Google Inc.
  2. Background information:
    1. A judge subsequently threw out SearchKing's lawsuit ...
  3. Mostly unrelated:
    1. ... protesting over a major cruise liner's sewage treatment methods.
  4. Duplicated links:
    1. This site had been active in beta for some months. ...
    2. Google introduced a beta release of a US only online map service
  5. Wrong link:
    1. Google receives over 200 million queries each day ...

Type 1 links are usually undisputed. However, some "center-of-the-universe" articles may be overlinked by other articles.

Type 2 links serve a good purpose by answering some indirectly related questions. A reader may ask why a judge would reject a lawsuit. You can always follow the link to find the answer (the demurrer page is not good enough now). And if you're visiting the demurrer page, you may use "What links here" to see how many cases ever used this legal principle.

Type 3 links serve a marginally useful job by sending people to fields they knew little about. You may use these links to send a muscian to a biology page or a mechanic to learn more about Antarctica.

The only kinds of links I cannot effectively justify are type 4 and 5 ones. I am doing my very best to reduce duplicated and wrong links.

Links are cheap. Overlinking may look ugly, but underlinking surely means less contents. Links are actually meta-data providers. 2004 and the United States are two overlinked pages. However, you can still use the offline database to do your data mining. Links may bring the Wiki server to its knees, but without them, people may take much more time to locate a wanted page. It takes me time to hunt for the right links. So please do not overkill links just to serve your visual pleasure. -- Toytoy 19:30, Feb 8, 2005 (UTC)

1 Your first example is not a good one since "US" IS wiki linked in the very first sentence of the article, it was removed because it was redundant not because it was a bad link.
2 Google has probably had 1000s of lawsuits against it thrown out, if it was a link to information specific to that case against it then maybe it would be relevant (relevant as a citation, not as a link perhaps).
3-5 Unrelated, duplicated and wrong links should not be added
zen master T 19:41, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Ranking?

Without links, how do they rank news group articles?

For example, I searched "George W. Bush" using Google Groups:

  1. Is BfB related to George W. Bush?
    soc.culture.irish - Nov 24 2004, 6:46 am by GoldenArse - 2 messages - 2 authors
  2. I collect books about George W.Bush ! ! !
    rec.collecting.books - Nov 18 2004, 10:03 pm by henry - 13 messages - 13 authors
  3. Pat. Buchanan, Dan Rather, George W. Bush
    soc.culture.cuba - Jan 22, 4:06 pm by ricardo gonzalez - 1 message - 1 author
  4. George W. Bush. The Dunce
    rec.martial-arts - Nov 2 2004, 6:08 pm by YoJimbo - 23 messages - 12 authors
  5. George W. Bush: Presidential or Pathological?
    misc.health.alternative - Dec 27 2004, 7:38 pm by BLUERHYMER - 9 messages - 6 authors
  6. _Rocky Mountain News_ Endorses George W. Bush for President
    misc.transport.road - Nov 12 2004, 4:17 pm by Alan Stevens - 20 messages - 11 authors
  7. The Wit and Wisdom of George W. Bush
    soc.culture.laos - Nov 12 2004, 1:16 am by Joe Fukawe - 1 message - 1 author
  8. Congratulations George.W.Bush[NDC]
    rec.music.dylan - Nov 4 2004, 6:31 pm by Tim Herrick - 69 messages - 22 authors
  9. George W. Bush prepares his ultimatum
    misc.activism.militia - Mar 14 2003, 9:05 pm by Martin S. White - 1 message - 1 author
  10. Sporting insights into the character of George W. Bush
    misc.activism.progressive - Oct 31 2004, 11:23 pm by Rich Winkel - 2 messages - 1 author

It's pretty strange. None of the top 10 articles belongs to any political discussion groups. And George W. Bush is a political figure! Only one newsgroup is war-related, and that's a militia newsgroup (for God's sake). The second newsgroup (rec.collecting.books), in my opinion, is among the least Bushy newsgroups in the world. How do they rank newsgroup posts?

Another frequently-searched keyword "sex" is equally interesting:

  1. Essential info on masturbation and sex
    alt.sex.addiction.recovery.moderated - Jan 27, 2:01 pm by Essential Sex Info - 1 message - 1 author
  2. ESSENTIAL INFO ON MASTURBATION AND SEX
    misc.health.alternative - Jan 29, 5:16 am by Essential Sex Info - 13 messages - 10 authors
  3. Pawan Deshpande - Sex Map Shows Chain of Almost 300 High ...
    soc.sexuality.general - Jan 25, 9:48 am by ChrisB - 14 messages - 6 authors
  4. Sex, love, marriage and intermarriage - Reccomended books
    soc.culture.jewish.moderated - Jan 27, 12:50 pm by Robert - 3 messages - 3 authors
  5. People's general lack of interest in sex. (long post)
    soc.sexuality.general - Mar 29 2004, 3:43 am by Elisobella - 68 messages - 16 authors
  6. Having sex according to a pre-set schedule
    soc.sexuality.general - Mar 12 2004, 12:41 pm by ::ALIUS:: - 16 messages - 10 authors
  7. How to control your sex desire (Islam's view)...Nah...Ah Beng ...
    soc.culture.malaysia - Jan 23, 4:48 pm by w-o-r-l-d-p-i-s-s-e-d - 15 messages - 14 authors
  8. What price sex? About £30K
    uk.gay-lesbian-bi - Apr 13 2004, 10:23 am by paul - 1 message - 1 author
  9. Sex and the seasons
    soc.sexuality.general - Jan 26, 4:39 pm by Ana - 27 messages - 15 authors
  10. {ASSM} ESSENTIAL INFO ON MASTURBATION AND SEX
    alt.sex.stories.moderated - Jan 28, 5:10 pm by Essential Sex Info - 1 message - 1 author

OK, maybe I am not well-informed. But why does Google list "Essential info on masturbation and sex" three times? Is that article so important? It looks like spam to me. Most articles belong to sex- or health-related newsgroups, but why do one Jewish intermarriage article (see: Silent Holocaust) and another Muslim article enter the top 10?

How do they rank the articles? -- Toytoy 15:35, Feb 9, 2005 (UTC)

This article may be overly specific and qualify as fancruft

I think it should be considered that perhaps this article is straying from encyclopedic and walking the line of fancruft. The article on Yahoo!, Microsoft, and pick any other random corporation do not go into detail concerning every little service. If we were to put every single one of Microsoft's product logos in the microsoft article, we'd be in big trouble :). As of right now the Google article has 47 sections. I think it could reasonably be narrowed down to less than ~15-20. One solution will be to include a timeline outlining the release dates of Google's services and other important dates, perhaps. I'm familiar with the timeline syntax, but I don't want to add it if it's just going to be yet another addition to an already overly-sectionalized and detailed article. I would appreciate your comments. --Alterego 04:55, Feb 12, 2005 (UTC)

I agree, this article is rather sanitary, verbose, and the overall tone is a kind of POV. The different google properties section like google answers, catalogs, directory, froogle etc etc definitely don't each need to have their coresponding image in my opinion. Is all that google jargon notable? Hopefully this doesn't scare away Google's wikipedia hosting offer, though I bet Google would love to be able to peak at network traffic to see who is editing their article etc... zen master T 13:42, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Definitely. I actually considered splitting this article up into several sub-articles (Google services, History of Google etc) IMO, this whole thing's a mess. Half the stuff in Google Inc. is straight copy-and-paste from here (or vice versa, I'm not sure). At the moment, it's too big and unwieldy for anyone to fix. I would do it, but I keep getting discouraged halfway through. CXI 08:39, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Some of that content is cut and pasted beacuse it belongs on both pages. [Full disclosure: I probably did most of the copying and pasting] The company and website's history are inexorably bound. I support spinning a history page off and I agree that icons for every service (especially since they are so similar) is excessive. I think having a NPOV article for google and google inc before we officially go under google's wing is important as to avoid possible POV or pressure concerns. Also I'm considering trimming the controversy section on this page since it is exactly copied to the Google Inc. page and some of it seems to apply not too the engine but the company. BrokenSegue 22:26, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)
The google inc. article should be eliminated and any pertinent content should be merged into this article. zen master T 22:33, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Another possibility is to have this article redirect to the Google Inc. article. I am opposed to having more than one at this stage, however. I will start work on this timeline...I just have a lot of things going on right now. But it's coming --Alterego 23:56, Feb 14, 2005 (UTC)

Renaming to search ignores talk comments to merge this with Google Inc

renaming this google article to google search seems like a way of avoiding the talk page comments that google should be merged with the google inc article. Why was google renamed to google search? Is there a plan to shrink this article down now that the topic is more specific? The google inc article can perhaps become a daughter of the original google article, currently, the two articles are organizationally daughter articles without a parent. In my opinion the rename should be rolled back and a merger should be undertaken. zen master T 14:43, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I agree with the roll back, but not the merger. This move doesn't make sense. Even the article title seems wrong since it should be Google (search) or some variant, the search engine is called google not google search. I don't understand what is supposed to go on the Google page now. I'm going to undo this change unless someone tells me otherwise. BrokenSegue 20:44, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC) I misunderstood what was going on. My apologies. BrokenSegue 20:44, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

The Google article now has no criticisms section??

Can someone explain the move that took place earlier today? Apparently the Google Inc article became the Google article and the original Google article is now Google search? Conveniently there is no criticisms section. This move should be rolled back but I will wait for someone to come up with a rationale. zen master T 14:52, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Huh? What you are looking for is here. --Paul 17:20, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Uhhh, the criticisms should be in the main article. Why wasn't this change discussed on the talk page first? There was discussion here of merging the two articles which I still think makes the most sense. If the Google search article is just narrowly specific to their search technology then all the other information, such as the criticisms section, should be moved to the new Google article, right? Unless someone posts a compelling rationale for not doing so I will move the criticisms section and all other relevant (non search technology related) sections from the new Google search article to the new google article. 18:43, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I'd say sections 1,2, and parts of section 5 (criticisms) should be moved to Google. The criticisms that are specific to the way the search engine works should remain here. Section 4 I think can be removed altogether and made a single sentence perhaps in the introductory paragraph. Nohat 18:55, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)
On the other hand, if we want to have all the criticisms of Google together, perhaps they should be moved to a separate page which is summarized and linked to in a section on each of Google and Google search. There are cetainly enough Google-haters out there to fill an entire page of criticisms. Nohat 18:57, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)
The crticisisms should all be moved back to the main Google article as a starting point for *ANY* further discussion. They were moved illegitimately, I am going to move them back now since you have not justified the initial move (please try to now).
Though I agree that a significant amount of clean up may be warranted, let's discuss after we rectifiy the initial illegitimate move. By what rationale do you support the truncation of section 4 and your other proposed changes? zen master T 19:02, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I never did anything to the criticisms section. I just moved the page called "Google" to "Google search" once most of the discussion of the non-search-related items had been moved to List of Google services and tools, because at that point the page was mostly about Google search. This left open the notional space for a page called "Google", which seemed an appropriate place for an article about the company called Google, which on a broader view is a much more salient denotation for the term "Google" than merely one of the myriad services offered by the company. I never did anything in particular to the criticisms section, it simply moved with all the other content that used to be on "Google" to "Google search". Now that the Google search article has a name that specifies its content and being pertinent mainly to Google search, it seems appropriate to move the few pieces of information on that page that are not necessarily pertinent to Google search to a more appropriate place. It is this reason I believe justifies the changes I suggest. It is not clear to me, however, why it is necessary for the detailed description of the criticisms and controversies concerning Google search to be on the page pertaining to the company as a whole on not on the page pertaining just to the search engine. Nohat 19:29, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I disagree with your assertion that the old Google article was just search related. Please note that there was more talk page support for merging the two articles together than the switch you performed. Criticisms located in the main articles makes 10 times more sense than an article titled "search" with criticisms in it. The new main Google article does not pertain to just the company, nice try to mis-characterize it as such though (once the "Inc" is taken off the article it is *the* main Google article). It honestly seems like you are trying to obfuscate valid criticisms into a nearly orphaned, low traffic, inaccurately titled, daughter article. There is probably more stuff in the Google search article that should be moved back to the Google article. zen master T 19:36, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)
You are correct that the old Google article was more than just search related. However, once the vast majority of the non-search related content, which comprised mostly a long laundry list of Google's products and services and logos, had been moved to a separate article. If you look at a recent version of the page, you'll find that more that two thirds of the content is specific to the search engine.
I'm not trying to whitewash anything—I'm only trying to make the organization of this encyclopedia better. I think you'll find people will be more amenable to your suggestions if you drop the conspiracy theories and instead focus on the problem at hand, which is improving the encyclopedia. I think you should first explain why it is so important that the search engine and the company be conflated rather than clearly separated in the articles. They are clearly separate entities—why must discussion of controversy surrounding the search engine be included on the page the describes the company? It seems to me that you're some kind of Google opponent who wants to ensure that negative information about the company is as high-profile as possible on this encyclopedia. Prove me wrong and show me how your proposals make Wikipedia better. Separate topics go into separate articles. Good organization trumps the desire to "blow the whistle" on all the "nastiness" that Google has been "up to". Nohat 20:07, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)
What you label as conspiracy theories is instead factually cited information. If you want to dispute as too negative or clean up the criticisms section then lets discuss it, please don't mask your true intentions by illogically moving data. There are actually talk page comments above that indicated the tone of the Google article is actually too positive. What exactly do you think I am "suggesting"? I believe that extremely relevant data should not be moved without talk page discussion first, especially in cases when the new location does not make logical sense. I was just a small and the most recent contributor the Criticisms section, it predates my involvement with this article and seems arrived at by consensus.
Once you renamed the Google Inc article to Google the scope changes, please give up your continued illogical claim that because the old article had "Inc" in its name we have to restrict the parent Google article to just the company, it doesn't make sense. I also still think the information in the Google search article should be merged back to Google (and we should not recreate a Google Inc article) but I will wait to hear others' comments on that proposal. zen master T 20:55, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I will return the articles to how they were before the page moves. Merging doesn't make sense to me and having Google Inc at Google defies the doctrine of least suprise. I disagree with merging because Google the company and google the popular search engine are so famous on their own that two articles are needed to cover them comprehensively. 90% of people searching for Google want the search engine, not the company. So, Google should not be about the company. As to the criticism section. I think criticsms valid to the company belong on the company article and criticisms of the search engine belong on the search page. BrokenSegue 21:15, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)
As I explain below, having Google the company at Google follows the principle of least surprise because the company is more important than the search engine. Do you have any evidence at all whatsoever to support your 90% claim, especially as pertains to people searching for Google in an encyclopedia? Indeed it seems much more likely that people will be interested in information about a large publicly-traded corporation than in the technical details of a search engine. Please do not move the articles back unless you can explain why my analysis is incorrect. Nohat 21:39, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)
What happened was this: before I made any changes, there were two articles, which I will give the notional names 'a:article-about-google-the-company and b:article-about-google-the-search-engine. Both articles had different and incomplete lists of various Google products and services.
There were some muddled proposals to merge them, but no one had done anything and no consensus had been reached. During the time of this discussion, I moved the laundry lists of Google products and services (which were divided between the two pages) onto a separate page, List of Google services and tools, which I'll call c for convenience. This change seemed to be not very controversial. No one has contested or reverted it.
Once all the content about the various Google services had been moved both from articles a and b to another page, what remained was two pages, one of which was mostly about the company (a), and one of which was mostly about the search engine (b). There was a small amount of overlap between a and b as well as with the new page c. It seemed to me that the most salient entity denoted by "Google" was the company, not the search engine, so I rearranged the pages so that the article a was called "Google" and article b was called "Google search". I wasn't trying to change what the articles were supposed to be about; I was only changing the titles of the articles so they better matched what their contents were.
In support of that change I present the following points:
  1. Trademarks (like when the name Google is used for a product) are properly adjectives—that is, it's technically the Google brand search engine.
  2. If a company makes many products, and one shares a name with the company, it creates inconsistency if all but that one are called by their full name, but the one that shares a name with the company is called only by the short name.
  3. Google is a large and important company. Its importance is derived from the sum of the importance of its products. If Google search has importance x and Gmail has importance y, and other Google services have importance z, the sum importance of the entire company is at least as great as the sum of the importance of its constituent products, in this case x+y+z, which anyone can tell you is greater than x (assuming importance is a always a positive quantity). Since the importance of Google the company is therefore ncessarily greater than the importance of Google the search engine, and the most salient denotation of a name is the most important denotation of the name, it is easy to see the simple conclustion that the most salient denotation of the name "Google" is the company, not the search engine. Wikipedia policy is that when one denotation of a name is more salient than all others, then that topic gets the simple page name, and all the other topics get page names with disambiguation.
  4. As for using the name "Google search", even when Google itself needs to disambiguate among its offerings, it calls its search engine "Google search" [15] [16]. It's the simplest and most natural disambiguation.
I don't think the proposal to merge Google and Google search is a very good proposal. The two articles stand strongly as large and mostly complete articles on their own with a clear separation of content (although some cleanup still needs to be done). Merging them would only conflate the two clearly distinct entities, and I have yet to see a good reason why they should be conflated. Nohat 21:32, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I support BrokenSeque's plan to return the articles to their pre-move condition. I do not feel strongly about mergering the articles though I think we will need to clean up the Google Inc article because it is not specific enough to just the company. Also, If anyone disagrees please say so but the way I see it 95% of the criticisms are related to the main article/search engine, criticisms specific to Google Inc would be things like employee or shareholder lawsuits etc in my opinion, even the legal issues section is related more to the search engine than the company. What do others think?

And if or when someone rollsback all the moved can they keep the current Criticisms section? I discovered when doing the partial move back there is/was a fair amount of duplicated content, if someone rollsback the moves can they keep the criticisms section from the current Google article, that is actually an improvement over what was in either article (I cleaned it up and eliminated redundant information). zen master T 21:47, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

No one has provided any lgoical reason why they should be moved back. I, however, have explained at length why they should stay where they are. Please explain your justification for why the Google search engine is the most salient denotation for the name "Google". Nohat 21:56, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)
<via edit conflict> The only evidence I have for the 90% figure <obviously pulled out of the air> are the what links here for the two articles. The old search engine site seems to have more links (what links here) than the company page does (what links here). If we are going to keep it this way, which doesn't seem too unreasonable [your explanation seems quite convincing], then lot's of redirects and double redirects need to be fixed. I still think that the criticisms should be distributed between the two articles since some criticisms refer to the copmany and some to the engine. Otherwise, as allready suggesed, we could create a new page. BrokenSegue 21:58, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)
The "what links here" links are a good contrary point of evidence. On third thought, the conflict seems perhaps unresolvable. Maybe the best solution would be to make Google a disambiguation page, with links to Google Inc. and Google search. That plan is acceptable to me. What do others think? Nohat 22:23, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)
My "evidence" for the 90% figure is the fact that putting the criticism section in the main/search article rather than the company specific article makes more sense logically. If someone can state a convincing logical argument why a particular criticism makes more sense in the company article then I would agree we should move it there. All the criticisms I see are more related to search/main than the company. Perhaps there is an issue of perception that we need to resolve, I see any company specific article as very narrowly focused (list of officers, history etc), to resolve this perhaps we should work towards defining the exact scope of Google Inc?
As far as the disambiguation page suggestion goes I can't help but ask does the Microsoft article have a daugther article that is just specific to the company itself? The answer from what I can see is No. Any alleged need for a disambiguation page is a direct result of the artificial distinction between the main/search article and the company article.
Final comment/question: Nohat's move of the google articles seems to have intertwined the two google articles talk pages into one namespace through redirects or some such? zen master T 22:37, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Yes, it seems that the issue is the understanding of what the Google-the-company article is about. It is, in theory, a much wider focus than an article about the search engine. It discusses all aspects of the company and its activities, not just history and employees, but things the company has done, like when it buys other companies or gives money away to charity or any of the many other activities that a company engages in that aren't tied to a particular product.
I imagine that that a typical, non-technical user of Wikipedia might read about Google in a newspaper article and want to look them up in the encyclopedia. It seems that the most generic possible situation for researching Google would be one where the researcher is interested in in a broad overview of the entire company and everything it does (Google), rather than a narrow discussion of the mostly technical aspects of one part of what the company does (Google search). Google is so much more than just a search engine company (that wasn't necessarily the case in the past, but it certainly is now). See Microsoft for an example of the extent that an article about a company can reach, and compare to Microsoft Windows. I don't see why Google and Google search shouldn't have the same division. I don't think it's as narrow a focus to restrict Google to just be about the company as you perhaps imagine.
As for the controversies and criticisms, they're almost entirely focused on the way they run their search engine, so it seems they belong on the article about the search engine. Of course, they reflect on the company on the whole, and so should be mentioned on the main page, with a pointer to the specifics where they are described. (Which I note is exactly how it was before the criticisms section got moved around today). Nohat 23:04, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)
The "wider focus" for a company specific article is your theory, not mine, I claim the scope should be narrow, especially considering it is a *daughter* article of the main google article. And since I know of no other article on wikipedia that has a company specific daughter article I think the precedent on wikipedia is for new *daughter* articles to be of more limited scope than the parent/main article, right? Google is relevant to most users (and the reason why they would look it up on wikipedia) because of their search brand/technology. Google search is precisely the most popular reason why someone would come to wikipedia looking for information on google in my opinion so why needlessly add a layer of indirection to the most popular information? People do millions of Google searches per day, how often do users interact with or are interested in something relating to the company specifically?
There is no such thing as a "parent article" or "daughter article" on Wikipedia. Each article stands alone. There is no hierarchy. The historical facts of how the articles were created have no bearing on how the articles ought to be. Explain how the Microsoft/Microsoft Windows articles aren't analogous. Give one a priori reason or piece of evidence that most people are looking for information on the search engine specifically and not on anything else about Google, including any of their other products or information about the company in general. It seems highly unlikely that "most users" aren't interested in any of the 30-some other products and services that Google provides. Those millions of orkut and Gmail and Keyhole and Picasa and Google Groups and Google Answers and Froogle and Blogger users I guess don't count for anything? Do you have a single shred of evidence at all whatsoever about what most people who look up "Google" in Wikipedia are looking for?
"The way they run their search engine" is more relevant to a search/main article than a company specifica rticle. If you are truly saying "how they run their search" info belongs in the company specific article then I don't see any logical rationale for a distinction (artificially created or otherwise) between the main and daughter google articles (which is one reason why I said the two articles should be merged). The articles were fine before you started moving them, what happened to BrokenSeque's plan to rollback the moves, would you support a rollback Nohat? The microsoft article you cite does include a (perhaps too brief) overview of criticisms and controversies with a link to the specific daughter article. I don't think the google article needs a daughter controversies article at this time. zen master T 23:28, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)
You seem to be very confused about articles on Wikipedia. Each article is its own entity. There is no hierarchy. Articles are only related to each other as siblings in the great article namespace. The original "Google" article got to be too big, so it was split, along the perfectly reasonable lines of information about Google the company and information about Google the search engine. It is merely a historical artifact of no contemporary significance that the content that was split out was the content about the company. The question then became, since both these entities have the same name, which one gets the name "Google". I think it makes more sense for the article about the company to get the name Google because it's conceptually the parent entity of the search engine. The company owns the search engine. The search engine is a product of the company. The company is as important as the sum of the importance of all its products and services. Since Google search is one of those products, and the other products have nonzero importance, the overall importance of the company is greater than that of the search engine. That is what I mean by the most salient denotation of the name "Google" being the company, not the search engine. The search engine is merely one of the many products that the company Google makes. Nohat 00:33, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)
The split along company vs search lines was your creation exclusively. There was more talk page support for merging the articles together. I do not consider your split reasonable. If there is a main Google article (no disambiguation page) then there is actually a de facto heirarchy. To a user visiting wikipedia the most important and most interesting thing is search. It stills seems like you are trying to move the criticisms section to lower trafficed daughter article(s). zen master T 00:55, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)
The split was not my invention at all. It happened before I came along. I just made the split more sensible by moving the lists of Google tools and services to a separate page. Check the history and see for yourself.
The fact that there is a "main" Google article doesn't mean that there's a hierarchy. It just means that one entity has to be chosen to take that name, and Wikipedia policy basically states that the article that should take that name should be the entity with the most salient denotation for the given name. I have already explained why the company Google meets that criterion.
You, on the other hand, have given no reason why the opposite should be true other than asserting with no evidence at all whatsoever that "most people" will be looking for information about the search engine. You haven't provided any reason to believe that "To a user visiting wikipedia the most important and most interesting thing is search" other than just asserting it over and over. Simply repeating something doesn't make it true. I have already explained now, several times, with reasoned argument as to why the company is more salient and deserving of the name "Google", but you haven't provided a single reason why the opposite should be true let alone how it might be true.
Finally, I really don't feel strongly about the criticisms section. I think that there should be mention of criticisms of Google on both pages, where relevant. The logical conclusion is that that criticisms for how they run their search engine would go with the rest of the description of the search engine. Criticisms about other business practices of theirs should go with the rest of the description of their business practices. Nohat 02:31, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

What happened

Now I understand...BrokenSegue 20:52, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Moved

I moved the article from Google search to Google (search engine). —Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 23:37, 2005 Feb 17 (UTC)

This move doesn't seem to follow disambiguation policy. The disambiguation parentheses are only to be used in cases where there isn't a full name for the entity needing disambiguation. In this case, there is such a full name: even Google themselves call their search engine "Google search". Nohat 00:33, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Would it be too much to ask people to agree on an article title before moving it? (Probably.) Mark1 01:00, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I totally agree but it should be noted that Nohat started the unilateral article renaming, Avar's change(s) are just logical clean ups of earlier renaming. zen master T 01:12, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Why would you call it a "logical clean up" when it doesn't follow the disambiguation policy? Nohat 02:16, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Lots of content needs moving back to main Google article

There is a significant amount of content in the (search engine) article that is unrelated to google's search engine/technology. We should endeavor to move it back to the main Google article or elsewhere. zen master T 01:12, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

like what? It seems fairly well focused now. BrokenSegue 02:06, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Seems to me there is a lot of stuff that isn't applicable in an article with "search engine" in its title: both sub sections of "The name Google" section, the jargon section and the Services and tools section. How are any of those three related to "search engine"? The last two paragraphs in the history section also are very questionable. zen master T 03:02, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Schedule for crawling

Does anyone know Google's schedule for crawling the web? I know it's about once a month, but not the exact schedule. Rad Racer 13:45, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Not off hand, I'll start tracking when their spider hits my website; seems like it's more often than that, but I'll see if I can find a pattern. I always thought it was continuously crawling. Asriel86 17:37, Mar 18, 2005 (UTC)
They don't have a 'scheudle' per se. Some sites such as mine get spidered every single day. It depends on what they think of you --Alterego 18:15, Mar 18, 2005 (UTC)

Googler

I'm a Googler and proud of it! Not an employee of Google, though.


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