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AudioGuy writes "A Guardian reporter, Rebecca MacKinnon, has some interesting insights on how Chinese censorship may be inadvertently leaking into Micosoft's Bing Search engine.
"After conducting my own research, running my own tests, and drawing upon nearly a decade of experience studying Chinese Internet censorship, I have concluded that what several activists and journalists have described as censorship on Bing is actually what one might call "second hand censorship". Basically, Microsoft failed to consider the consequences of blindly applying apolitical mathematical algorithms to politically manipulated and censored web content. The algorithm deployed by Bing may be mathematically sound, but it fails to protect online freedom of expression. Bing failed to take into account the political reality of Chinese government censorship and its broader impact on the shape of the Chinese Internet. Without adjustments to how simplified Chinese websites based outside of mainland China are "weighted," exiled and dissident online voices inevitably lose out. Put it another way: an apolitical mathematical formula automatically amplifies Chinese government censorship to all people searching for simplified Chinese content anywhere in the world, not just in China."
Apparently Google had the same problem, but has managed to write code to prevent these side effects."
(Score: 1) by Vanderhoth on Monday February 17 2014, @01:11PM
Competition is good regardless of who it's coming form. I'd prefer someone else, but no one ATM has the financial backing or massive corporate resources to take on Google in the search department.
"Now we know", "And knowing is half the battle". -G.I. Joooooe
(Score: 1) by umafuckitt on Monday February 17 2014, @01:49PM
And Microsoft have failed despite their corporate resources. Search is a tricky area because it's something users take for granted. A newcomer might return excellent search results but this still won't be enough to get people to switch from Google. Something more is needed, and it's unclear what this is. Back when Google made it big, they did two things: 1. Give people an uncluttered page and a memorable name. 2. Return high quality results in an easy to digest package. The other companies weren't doing that. Their pages were messy and visually unappealing. Those tricks won't work any more: they've been done already.
(Score: 1) by Vanderhoth on Monday February 17 2014, @01:56PM
Can't argue with that.
I still remember when AltaVista was the only search engine on the block and how ugly their site was. I still have PTSD nightmares from using it.
"Now we know", "And knowing is half the battle". -G.I. Joooooe
(Score: 1) by umafuckitt on Monday February 17 2014, @02:07PM
Argh! AltaVista! I remember doing the rounds between search engines because no one site was good enough. Now pretty much any of them are good enough.
(Score: 1) by dmc on Tuesday February 18 2014, @05:49AM
"
Back when Google made it big, they did two things:
"
They also had access to a third thing- vast free bandwidth and a willingness to scrape the internet for fair use purposes-
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3106555&cid=41 288357 [slashdot.org]
"
Re:EVIL: No Server Hosting Allowed (Score:5, Interesting)
by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 10, 2012 @10:46AM (#41288357)
Posting anonymously for reasons that will be obvious.
Larry Page is really annoyed by the "no servers" clause. In an internal weekly all-hands meeting he repeatedly needled Patrick Pichette about the limitation, and pointedly reminded him that the only reason Google was able to get off the ground was because Page and Brin could use Stanford's high-speed Internet connection for free. Page wants to see great garage startups being enabled by cheap access to truly high-speed Internet. Pichette defended it saying they had no intention of trying to enforce it in general, but that it had to be there in case of serious abuse, like someone setting up a large-scale data center.
I don't think anyone really has to worry about running servers on their residential Google Fiber, as long as they're not doing anything crazy. Then again it's always possible that Page will change his mind or that the lawyers will take over the company, and the ToS is what it is. If I had Google Fiber I'd run my home server just as I do on my Comcast connection, but I'd also be prepared to look for other options if my provider complained.
"