Criticism of Google

Google, as a corporation that compiles information and makes it searchable via the Internet, has received criticism regarding issues such as intellectual property, internet privacy, and censorship. Google's mission statement is "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful," but the means used to accomplish this mission have been questioned by others. Much of the criticism of Google pertains to issues yet to be addressed by cyber law. In addition, the energy usage required for Google's servers has also been criticized.

Copyright issues

Kazaa and the Church of Scientology have used the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to demand that Google remove references to allegedly copyrighted material on their sites. While Google potentially faces lawsuits when not removing such links, critics argue that Google has an obligation to direct users to intended content and not censor results based on copyright.

The New York Times has complained that the caching of their content during a web crawl, a feature utilized by search engines including Google Web Search, violates copyright. Google observes Internet standard mechanisms for requesting that caching be disabled via the robots.txt file, which is another mechanism that allows operators of a website to request that part or all of their site not be included in search engine results, or via META tags, which allow a content editor to specify whether a document can be crawled or archived, or whether the links on the document can be followed. The U.S. District Court of Nevada ruled that Google's caches do not constitute copyright infringement under American law in Field v. Google and Parker v. Google.

On September 20, 2005, the Authors Guild, a group that represents 8,000 U.S. authors, filed a class action suit in federal court in Manhattan against Google over its unauthorized scanning and copying of books through its Google Library program. Google states that it is in compliance with all existing and historical applications of copyright laws regarding books. The publicized contract between Google and the University of Michigan makes it clear that Google will provide only excerpts of copyright text in a search. The contract says that it will comply with "fair use", an exemption in copyright law that allows people to reproduce portions of text of copyrighted material for research purposes.

On July 14, 2008, Viacom compromised to protect YouTube users' personal data in their $1 billion copyright lawsuit. Google agreed it will anonymize user information and internet protocol addresses from its YouTube subsidiary before handing the data over to Viacom. The privacy deal also applied to other litigants including the FA Premier League, the Rodgers & Hammerstein organization and the Scottish Premier League. The deal however did not extend the anonymity to employees, since Viacom would prove that Google staff are aware of the uploading of illegal material to the site. The parties therefore will further meet on the matter lest the data be made available to the court.

Privacy

North America

Google originally placed a cookie on each registered user's computer, which can be used to track that person's search history, and that cookie was not set to expire until 2038. As of 2007, Google's cookie now expires in two years but renews itself when a Google service is used. There is no evidence that Google turns over information to the FBI or the NSA, though some users remain anxious about the possibility. In response, Google claims cookies are necessary to maintain user preferences between sessions and offer other search features. Other popular search engines, such as Yahoo! Search and Microsoft's Bing, use cookies with distant expiration dates as well.

Privacy International has raised concerns regarding the dangers and privacy implications of having a centrally-located, widely popular data warehouse of millions of Internet users' searches, and how under controversial existing U.S. law, Google can be forced to hand over all such information to the U.S. government. In early 2005, the United States Department of Justice filed a motion in federal court to force Google to comply with a subpoena for, "the text of each search string entered onto Google's search engine over a one-week period (absent any information identifying the person who entered such query)." Google fought the subpoena, due to concerns about users' privacy. In March 2006, the court ruled partially in Google's favor, recognizing the privacy implications of turning over search terms and refusing to grant access.

Steve Ballmer, Liz Figueroa, Mark Rasch, and the editors of Google Watch believe the processing of email message content by Google's Gmail service goes beyond proper use. Google claims that mail sent to or from Gmail is never read by a human being beyond the account holder, and is only used to improve relevance of advertisements. Whether Google is the only one doing this or simply the only one who publicly admits it is unknown, since the privacy policies of other popular email services, like Hotmail and Yahoo, allows for collection and utilizing of personal information for ads when using their services, but do not specify precisely what information and which services.

Google's online map service, "Street View" has been accused of taking pictures and coming too close inside people's private homes and/or people who walk down the street not knowing they are being watched on Google's service. Aaron and Christine Boring, a Pittsburgh couple, sued Google for "invasion of privacy". They claimed that Street View made a photo of their home available online, and it diminished the value of their house, which was purchased for its privacy. They lost their case in a Pennsylvania court. "While it is easy to imagine that many whose property appears on Google's virtual maps resent the privacy implications, it is hard to believe that any – other than the most exquisitely sensitive – would suffer shame or humiliation," Judge Hay ruled.

In its 2007 Consultation Report, Privacy International ranked Google as "Hostile to Privacy", its lowest rating on their report, making Google the only company in the list to receive that ranking.

European Union

European Union (EU) data protection officials (the Article 29 working party who advise the EU on privacy policy) have written to Google asking the company to justify its policy of keeping information on individuals’ internet searches for up to two years. The letter questioned whether Google has “fulfilled all the necessary requirements” on the EU laws concerning data protection. The probe by the EU into the data protection issue, As of 24 May 2007 is continuing. On 1 June Google agreed that its privacy policy is vague, and that they are constantly working at making it clearer to users. The resulting modifications to its privacy policies have been met with praise.

Norway

The Data Inspectorate of Norway (Norway is not a member of the EU) has investigated Google (and others) and has stated that the 18- to 24-month period for retaining data proposed by Google was too long.

Free Software

Google makes money on free software, but does not open the source of modified products it uses to power its servers, since even the most popular GNU GPL license does not require to open the source of remotely accessed software. Google Code does not allow the GNU Affero GPL license, which closes this loophole, for hosted projects.

Censorship

Main article: Censorship by Google

Google has been criticized for various instances of censoring its search results, most notably in cooperation with the government of China.

AdSense/AdWords

In August 2008, Google closed the AdSense account of a site that carried a negative view of Scientology and this was the second closing of such a site within 3 months. It is not certain if the account revocations actually were on the grounds of anti-religious content, however the cases have raised questions about Google's terms in regards to AdSense/AdWords. The Adsense policy defines that "Sites displaying Google ads may not include" ... "advocacy against any individual, group, or organization", which allows Google to revoke the above mentioned AdSense accounts. Also, Google's AdWords policy defines that "Advertising is not permitted for the promotion of religious content.".

Google reserves the right to close AdSense accounts for unproven reasons, such as alleged click fraud, without giving the publishers any tangible alleged facts to disprove. In such instances Google withholds all payment from the publisher. In addition, people claiming to be Google employees have approached AdSense users with closed accounts and offered to re-open them for a fee.

Search within search

For some search results, Google provides a secondary search box within search page that enables the user to find what they are looking for within a particular website. This idea originated from the way users were searching. According to software engineer Ben Lee and Product Manager Jack Menzel, “teleporting” on the web is what helps Google users to complete their search. Google took this concept a step further and instead of just “teleporting”, which means users need only to type part of the name of a website into Google (no need to remember the entire URL) in order to find the correct site, users could type in keywords to search within the website of their choice. It appeared that users were often not finding exactly what they needed while trying to explore within a company site.

Although this is an innovative search tool for users, it sparked some controversy among some online publishers and retailers. Google result pages display pay per click ads from rival companies,who do not want google to spread its shades throughout the world which sell ads against brands. “While the service could help increase traffic, some users could be siphoned away as Google uses the prominence of the brands to sell ads, typically to competing companies.” In order to combat this controversy, Google has offered to turn off this feature for companies who request to have it removed.

Digital rights management

Announced on January 6, 2006 at the CES in Las Vegas, Nevada, the Google Video store began selling copyrighted content at the Google Video website. Initially, this service was restricted to the United States and certain other countries. To protect copyright of some video programming, Google created a Google DRM (Digital Rights Management) lock for certain paid content.

On 2007-08-15 Google discontinued its DTO/DTR (download-to-own/rent) program. Videos which had been previously purchased under that program, as a result of the embedded DRM licenses being revoked, are no longer viewable despite being purchased for ownership. Google chose to refund all its customers by issuing "gift certificates" (or "bonuses") to their "Google Checkout Account" accounting for the full amount spent on videos.

Energy consumption

Google has been criticized for the high amount of energy necessary to maintain its servers. Google has pledged to spend millions of dollars on investigating cheap, clean, renewable energy, and has installed solar panels on the roofs at its Mountain View facilities.

Doodles

Google was criticized in 2007 for not featuring versions of the Google logo (known as "Doodles") for American patriotic holidays such as Memorial Day and Veterans Day. That year, Google featured a logo commemorating Veterans Day.

Pornography

Google is criticized for providing porn links in countries where the porn materials are illegal.

See also

• Censorship by Google
• Criticism of Gmail
• Don't be evil
• Google Watch
• Googleopoly
• History of Google
• Scroogle

External links

• Privacy Group Flunks Google, eWeek.com
• The Economist, "Who's afraid of Google?" from Aug 30th 2007