Google

Google is a company whose primary business is Internet-based services, including an extremely popular search engine. Google is associated with liberal causes and has been criticized for catering to communist China in censoring information from the people as requested by dictators:

Reporters Without Borders joined others in asking how Google could stand up for US users' freedoms while controlling what Chinese users can search for. Its previous search engine for China's fast-growing market was subject to government blocks. The new site - Google.cn - censors itself to satisfy Beijing. While cooperating with China's govenment, Google refuses to fulfill requests by the U.S. Department of Justice. Google counsel Nicole Wong said "..we intend to resist their motion vigorously."

Google has also been accused of delisting conservative news sites from its search engine. As one of many examples, "In February 2005, Michelle Malkin wrote of the difficulties she was having becoming part of Google News."

Much of Google's business depends on pornography. For example, 25% of search engine requests are for pornography.

In addition, although claiming to generally avoid getting involved in matters outside their field, Google officially supports the liberal and social libertarian cause of so-called "same sex marriage." On June 21, 2009, Google displayed a special multicolored line for searches on the word "gay". More troubling, Google recently announced plans to compensate employees to cover taxes paid on their domestic partner's health benefits, but only offers its 'generosity' to gay couples. . Google is also big promoter of Charles Darwin and atheistic science, even to the point of giving special recognition to the anniversary of Darwin's birthday ("Darwin Day").

Major competitors of Google include Yahoo! and Microsoft's Bing.

Corporate Information

The CEO of Google since 2001 is Eric Schmidt. Google is headquartered in Mountain View, California. Google was founded on September 7th, 1998, by Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Since then, it has grown to be the largest internet search engine in the world. According to Alexa Internet, over 25% of all Internet users visit Google monthly.

Google also owns YouTube, the homemade video clip site. Viacom is suing YouTube, and thus Google, for a reported $1 billion, arguing that the economic model of YouTube is based on copyright infringement.

After much debate about their corporate Code of Conduct, Google's founders settled on the all-encompassing "Don't be evil", saying,"It's built around the recognition that everything we do in connection with our work at Google will be, and should be, measured against the highest possible standards". This Code of Conduct has generated much criticism, saying they have missed that mark badly.

History

Google's logo on Earth day, April 22, 2007.

Founding

Google was originally a research project, started by Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 1996, when the two attended Stanford University. The two registered the domain name google.stanford.edu, and the small search engine went online for the first time.

Growth

The year Google was created 1998, it had amassed 26 million unique URLs in their database. By 2000, Google had indexed more than 1 billion pages. As of July 2008, Google has indexed over 1 trillion pages.

Competition

Microsoft has been aggressively competing with Google for a larger share of the search market. Their latest effort, Bing.com, is a "next generation" search service which has generated positive reviews.

Secular Progressive Culture

Google's West Coast headquarters hires a majority of left-leaning personalities, explicitly in executive decision-making. Google supports causes that are a radical departure from traditional American views, such as their public support of a 'no' vote for California's Proposition 8, which defined marriage as being between a husband and wife. Also in a subtle way, they favor politically-correct global liberalism, championed by secular progressives. They select certain days of importance for tribute, some of which are controversial. As such, Merry Christmas is replaced by Happy Holidays. Even though, poll after poll after poll shows the public prefers 'Merry Christmas'. The problem may be that Google doesn't respect traditional Christian holidays, in favor of a 'culturally-correct' approach. In addition, Google accepts the Theory of Evolution by Charles Darwin as fact, promotes Darwin on their homepage with a Google Doodle logo.

Google often honors Russia with their logo of Sputnik and for composer Igor Stravinsky. However, they did not honor United States Flag Day, June 14. (Their competitor Bing prominently displayed Old Glory.)

Google versus Conservatives

• Many instances whereby information is comprised ideologically and displayed for the masses. Watchdog website NewsBusters.org published that Google had in fact labeled conservative American Spectator as "This site may harm your computer."

• Google continues to block pro-family website MassResistance. Some people complain his organization promotes hatred towards homosexuals. Google gives the standard legal trash as an excuse "'Users may not publish material that promotes hate towards groups based on race, ethnic origin, religion, disability, gender, age, veteran status, and sexual orientation/gender identity.'" MassResistance replies "Of course we are not promoting hate against anybody."

• YouTube owner, Google continues to protect Planned Parenthood by removing undercover videos exposing abortion clinic law-breaking.

• Without any prior explanation or notice, Google had been terminating its News relationships with conservative e-zines and web journals.

• Google attempted to minimize global awareness of the ClimateGate emails and the truth about the anthropogenic global warming theory, whence the term "Googlegate" gained recognition across the Web. Non-coincidentally, Al Gore is on the Google advisory board.

• Curiously, leading up to Restoring Honor 8-28-10 -- on Google Maps -- the Lincoln Memorial was being misplaced in favor of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Memorial, which is a good half a mile south of the more famous memorial. This may have been an ongoing, known problem or bug in Google Maps that hadn't been fixed yet; or, Google is censoring search results; or, Google is playing with searches for political power and gain.

Google versus Anti- Obama Blogs

The question immediately raised, "Did Google Silence Barack Obama critics?" It turns out, no they did not. A group of separate blogs were targeted by their spam filter as a result of manipulating the 'flag' feature. This caused a temporary blockage for five days. Sites affected were Hillary supporters and all anti-Obama. They include http://bluelyon.blogspot.com, http://comealongway.blogspot.com, http://hillaryorbust.blogspot.com and http://mccaindemocrats.blogspot.com and their main associate JustSayNoDeal.com

Google bombing

Perhaps the most innovative contribution Google has made to internet searching is its PageRank algorithm. This system works by counting the number of sites that link to another site; the more links pointing to a page, the higher that page will be ranked. The engine also takes note of how often the page is updated. Due to this, Wikipedia is consistently ranked very highly by Google, due to its constant updating and heavy linkage. More recently, internet-savvy Googlers have discovered ways to game the system; creating massive numbers of pages with links pointing to one page to form what is known as a "Google Bomb". Some examples can be found below.

• "Miserable Failure": For nearly two years, typing "miserable failure" (or even just "miserable", or "failure") and then clicking "I'm Feeling Lucky" in the Google search engine would return the White House Biography of George W. Bush. This was orchestrated by Democratic Party supporters in late 2003, as part of the 2004 Presidential election. However, at times, Conservative supporters were able to shift the phrase to Jimmy Carter, Hillary Clinton and Michael Moore.
• '"Great President": returns the White House Biography of George W. Bush.
• "Waffles": Also as part of the 2004 Presidential election, Conservative supporters managed to link the term "waffles" to the official website of John Kerry.
• "French Military Victories": Hitting "I'm Feeling Lucky" for this term directs you to a fake Google page (in reality, it is an AlbinoBlackSheep.com page, styled to look exactly like a Google page, here) giving no matches, and asking if you meant "French military defeats?".
• "Weapons of Mass Destruction" would bring up a similar page with the error message 'not found.'

On January 25, 2007, Google claimed to have modified their PageRank algorithm to lessen the likelihood of future Google bombs

Controversy

Privacy Concerns

Google has been criticized by privacy activists and others. Recently, Google chief executive Eric Schmidt said, "We cannot even answer the most basic questions because we don’t know enough about you. That is the most important aspect of Google’s expansion." Google has attempted to "remedy" this situation by storing search information, in effect, keeping tabs on people for two years after they search. This has led Google critic Daniel Brandt to create "Scroogle.org", which runs Google searches that users conduct through his organization's personal servers to prevent Google from being able to connect any personal information to the searchers.

Hypocrisy on Net neutrality

Neil Stevens of Redstate.com notes that Google says one thing and does another, tarnishing their reputation in the process. He lists where Google emphasizes support then does what they want in regards to shutting down access.

References

United States companies