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Google has censored the term "Kodi" from its search engine's autocomplete feature, despite it being completely legal open source software:
Google has banned the term "Kodi" from the autocomplete feature of its search engine. This means that the popular software and related suggestions won't appear unless users type out the full term. Google has previously taken similar measures against "pirate" related terms and confirms that Kodi is targeted because it's "closely associated with copyright infringement."
[...] The company demotes results from domain names for which it receives many DMCA takedown notices, for example, and it has also removed several piracy-related terms from its autocomplete feature. The latter means that when one types "pirate ba" it won't suggest pirate bay. Instead, people see "pirate bays" or "pirate books" as suggestions. Whether that's very effective is up for debate, but it's intentional.
[...] The Kodi team, operated by the XBMC Foundation, is disappointed with the decision and points out that their software does not cross any lines. "We are surprised and disappointed to discover Kodi has been removed from autocomplete, as Kodi is perfectly legal open source software," XBMC Foundation President Nathan Betzen told us.
The Kodi team has been actively trying to distance itself from pirate elements. They enforce their trademark against sellers of pirate boxes and are in good contact with Hollywood's industry group, the MPAA.
Related: MPAA Chief Focuses Attention on the Kodi Platform
Hollywood Strikes Back Against Illegal Streaming Kodi Add-Ons
Kodi Returns to its Roots With an Xbox One Release
Kodi Media Player Addon Developers Under Pressure from ACE, Dish Network
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Friday March 30 2018, @07:14AM (9 children)
I'll be happy to use DuckDuckGo all the time when the day comes that I don't have to switch from DuckDuckGo to Google because I can't find something important by praying to The Duck.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 3, Informative) by Spamalope on Friday March 30 2018, @01:10PM (2 children)
Has Duck started it's own search system? It was an aggregator when I first looked, so censoring will affect them too.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday March 30 2018, @03:36PM (1 child)
Censoring autocomplete is different from censoring results:
https://www.google.com/search?q=kodi [google.com]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by HiThere on Friday March 30 2018, @06:20PM
Your point is good and valid... and the other comments are reacting to implicit threats, and taken in that sense also valid.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by mrpg on Friday March 30 2018, @06:13PM (4 children)
That happened to me for a week and then I decided to use https://www.startpage.com/ [startpage.com]
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday March 30 2018, @06:22PM (3 children)
Why? What does it do? The link looks just like a base google page with a pretty background.
If I want to link to sites I frequently go to, I already don't use google. I've got a panel of bookmarks that's a lot more convenient.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by mrpg on Friday March 30 2018, @07:54PM (2 children)
It gives better results than duckduckgo.
https://www.startpage.com/uk/protect-privacy.html [startpage.com]
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday March 30 2018, @10:22PM (1 child)
How is it different from just using Google?
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 4, Informative) by toddestan on Friday March 30 2018, @10:41PM
It's more of an anti-tracking thing. You type your query into Startpage, Startpage goes and searches Google and gives you the results back, so (at least in theory) the big G doesn't know what you searched for. But other than that, it's just Google search.
(Score: 3, Informative) by toddestan on Friday March 30 2018, @10:52PM
I've been using DuckDuckGo for a long time now, it's been a good while since I've had any luck finding something on Google when the Duck comes up empty. If I can't find something on DuckDuckGo, I've found the only thing Google seems to be good at is wasting my time with endless pages of garbage search results.