EnlightenmentFan's Journal: Google again kills Microsoft switch story

After Slashdot flagged Microsoft's phony switch testimonial, Microsoft pulled the ad, and somehow its Google cache also vanished. (You can still see the ad at ScriptingNews, however.)

Now another Microsoft switcher story is gone from Google.

David Pogue wrote two columns for the October 17 New York Times. One of them, on the two-b utton Palm, is in the Times online index and turns up at the top of the Google search page for (for example) "Pogue two-button" . The other colu mn has mysteriously become invisible both to Google and to the NY Times online search engine. Not surprisingly, the invisible column was the Microsoft switcher stor y. I finally found it by going to Pogue's own site, www.DavidPogue.com

Try it yourself--pick a string-- any string--related to Pogue's Microsoft switcher story--even something as detailed as "Pogue Microsoft New York Times" . You can find a few people who quoted Pogue's column, but you can't find the column itself.

Google claims it doesn't invisibly kill links. If someone demands that a page be removed by Google, due to copyright or other infringement, Google claims it links to the "kill request" instead. But this is not what happened when the Microsoft switcher ad was killed--even its Google cache disappeared without a trace. This is also not what happened when the Oct. 17 NY Times article about the Microsoft switcher ad vanished.

Conspiracy theory: did someone object to Pogue's calling Slashdotters "articulate"?