Google in Trouble for Suggesting Illegal Software 370
JehCt writes "Google is being sued over the 'suggest' feature built into its latest toolbar. InfoWorld reports: 'ServersCheck, a small company that makes network monitoring software,' is complaining that, 'If ServersCheck is entered, Google generates suggested search terms such as serverscheck crack, serverscheck pro crack and serverscheck keygen which lead to pirated software.' In an apparent public relations blunder, Google claimed to have no way of filtering suggestions. However, Google can and does filter because the toolbar won't provide suggestions for keywords like 'porn'."
No leg to stand on? (Score:4, Informative)
The exhaustive results of google search is one thing, but making suggestions to illegal activity in the toolbar is taking it a bit over the line.
Play with this feature w/o the toolbar (Score:5, Informative)
Re:No leg to stand on? (Score:5, Informative)
To clarify, this isn't Google's AdWords advertising that's under scrutiny. It's the 'suggest' feature of the new toolbar. Similar to what's found here [google.com].
Personally I don't care for the feature. If I'm going to search for something I can type it in myself. If I make a mistake, Google has taught me that spelling correctly isn't as important as it used to be
Re:No leg to stand on? (Score:5, Informative)
They very likely *can't* do that with the product they have today. It is a technically possible solution that Google could impliment, but not one that they are capable of today.
In regards to the pornography, Google probably determined that porn showed up far too often when searching for something unrelated. They likely hardcoded the application to avoid displaying those hits.
Re:Hint: if the most common search phrases (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I was wondering when this was going to happen (Score:3, Informative)
Re:No leg to stand on? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Does that mean... (Score:3, Informative)
If a company is losing lots of money to piracy, that means most of the time that they're charging too much - high school economics has told me more than enough to figure out that charging less means more sales, and there's a point where your profit per sale and number of sales are optimal. Yes, there are always going to be pirates just looking to get out of paying, and you can't do much about it, but when you've overcharged to the point of making legitimate users steal your software, your business model is shot.
Google trends has given us some insight [slyck.com] into piracy as well, but that doesn't mean they encourage it. Rather than companies suing richer companies because they provide information that, statistically speaking, people want, they should use that information to their advantage and change their business model accordingly.
Not a US Case (Score:3, Informative)
I must say though, if we're going to get serious about monitoring the content on the internet (not saying we should...); this needs to be handled as international law because it's just retarded to do this on a country by country basis...
Re:No leg to stand on? (Score:5, Informative)
I guess this means a lot of people search for these things. But it's probably fair to complain about Google actually suggesting these search terms.
I personally disagree with this complaint, but I understand it.
No suggestions for porn? (Score:2, Informative)
Perhaps, but if you are more creative, you can get interesting suggestions [google.com] for things like "dirty s" or "pus" or "nip". And, hey! Whaddya know... "p0rn" and "pr0n" each produce suggestions. =)
Re:No leg to stand on? (Score:3, Informative)
Seriously, making it harder for legitimate users to use the software they've paid for is just plain silly, and I'm surprised that US law actually gives these "copy protection measures" legal protection.
Filtering results VS. Blocking searches (Score:3, Informative)
Here we have a classic example of not understanding how things work. It is relatively easy to prevent searches for specific items such as "porn", "pussy", etc. One simply provides a list of terms in the program that result in no search being performed. Here is some psuedo-code.
@banned_words="porn","pussy","dick";
foreach word in @banned_words {
if ( @search_terms=~m/$word/ ) {
$naughty=1;
break;
}
}
return 1 if ($naughty);
do_search(@search_terms);
As one can see, it is a very simple operation which, as other have pointed out, is easily circumvented.
Filtering the results is a much trickier proposition because there is context involved.
The same code applied to results would prevent results containing "pussy cat" from appearing in a search for "cat". It would also prevent any referrence to someone named "Dick" from appearing in, say, a search of Vice Presidents or actors.
In the case of the results listed ("serverscheck crack", "serverscheck pro crack", and "serverscheck keygen")trying to filter "crack" and or keygen would result in a large number of valid sights being block for OTHER searches. Imagine the results from search on ssh-keygen if one filters "keygen" out of the results.
Re:No suggestions for porn? (Score:2, Informative)
Interesting words NOT on blacklist:
All this means is that Google's filter is by no means perfect.
Re:No leg to stand on? (Score:3, Informative)
No, because this violates copyright law, and is not in the EULA.
Should Google Filter Anything? (Score:4, Informative)
Nation X: "We don't want our nation mentioned in the same search results as 'democracy'! "
Religion X: "We don't want our religion mentioned in the same search results as 'evolution'! "
To paraphrase that great thinker, Yoda, "Once you start down the path of filtering, forever will it dominate your destiny."
Or was it "Start down path the filtering of once you, destiny dominate it forever your will." Something like that. But then he said a lot of stupid stuff when he was drunk.
Re:No leg to stand on? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I read the posts, and no one is making this poi (Score:1, Informative)
It's still in alpha however so it doesn't provide the intended level of anonymity or usability/performance yet. The goal for v1.0 is essentially for it to be safe enough for Chinese political dissidents and the like to use, who require rather stronger protection than Johnny McWarezTrader.