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Google has banned items containing the string "gun" in the name on its e-commerce search platform, accidentally targeting many innocuous items:
Google Shopping, which allows users to compare product prices from thousands of online retailers, has removed all 'gun' search results - even if the product is not gun-related.
Online shoppers have complained about being unable to browse dozens of products such as Burgundy wine, water guns and music by American rock band Guns N' Roses. Searches for products including nail guns, glue guns and Arsenal Football Club's Gunnersaurus dinosaur mascot also returns the message: "Your search did not match any shopping results."
Google has banned weapons listings since 2012, however online shoppers have highlighted certain product unavailability since the Florida school shooting on Valentine's Day which left 17 dead.
The block could be circumvented using alternate terms such as "handgnu" or "fully automatic firearm".
Also at Engadget.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Friday March 02 2018, @07:54PM (9 children)
They might be trying to index all the world's information, but apparently all that information isn't doing them much good if they haven't learned a single damn thing from the past three decades of attempts to filter the web...
Stuff like this always reminds me of Napster. There was a brief period in between when the record labels first started going after them and when they turned into a paid service where they started blocking searches for specific artists. My older brother and I discovered that, while a search for "Chumbawamba" gave no results, you could still find all their songs by searching for "Wambachumba".
That was nearly twenty years ago now, and I was around ten years old at the time. So apparently Google's testing team is less clever than a friggin' child. If I was a bit more optimistic I'd say maybe this was intended as a lesson towards those pushing for braindead "solutions"...but I'll go with a bastardization of Hanlon's Razor instead -- Never attribute to benevolence that which is adequately explained by incompetence.
(Score: 3, Funny) by takyon on Friday March 02 2018, @08:26PM (1 child)
The real story might be that enough people use Google Shopping to have noticed this mistake.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Saturday March 03 2018, @03:04PM
Yep. I've used it on and off over the years, and it really seems to be pretty useless these days. It used to be really good at helping me find the best deals, frequently at stores I hadn't heard of, but not so much now.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 02 2018, @08:27PM (4 children)
Ironic, Chumbawamba, a band of self-proclaimed anarchists, exercising ownership over intellectual property.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 02 2018, @08:43PM (3 children)
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Friday March 02 2018, @09:23PM (2 children)
I hated, and continue to hate that band to this day for that phony bullshit.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 02 2018, @11:18PM (1 child)
I disagree, it is near impossible to 100% maintain ideological standpoints as broad as the issues RATM laid out. I liked this quote found on wikipedia.
Really now, they are just a band. Their power comes from being able to get out a message. Maybe they're not doing enough in your mind, but I don't see any phony bullshit surrounding them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 03 2018, @01:52PM
GG Allin is a great example of a non-phony anti-establishment musician. That motherfucker ate his own dog food, among other things.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Friday March 02 2018, @08:46PM (1 child)
Your parental control filter rejects this website because it's chock full of naked ladies:
24.25.26.27
But this website gets through the filter just fine:
24.25.26.27.
---------------^
Look carefully at the righthand end.
Some schoolchild figured this out. Doubtlessly he's working for the Joint Forces Cyber Command now.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 02 2018, @09:15PM
shut up, do not reveal the hidden archania bestowed upon those judged worthy by the elders of the Internet. If you continue I will have to dispatch a silencing team ;)