2002 / march / 21
Googletrouble
$cientology alert!
The cult of scientology are at it again! And it's disturbing: this time they are
threatening Google, on basis of the DMCA act and google caching's mechanism making
it a host rather than a search engine.
It's not clear what's happening exactly, but searching for 'scientology' used to
link to Operation Clambake, an anti-site, on
the first result page. Not surprising given that it is a well-informed site with
a long-standing reputation, therefore linked to from many places.
Yesterday, it sank to page nine, but you could still search for 'scientology bad'
and xenu.net would still come up on the first page. Now it's gone.
This is important, for a number of reasons - please, get informed, and read
these articles. This is about the scientology organisation doing everything
they can come up with to silence counteropinions. And it is also about
google, and therefore about the usablity of the whole internet.
Really, this is very disturbing.
Articles and discussion:
kuro5hin article and discussion,
Metafilter discussion,
xenu.net/news/.
PS this article
in microcontent explains googlebombing, it's linked to from the articles
above; well worth reading also... but I mention it specifically for the
last line, which had me cracking up:
all your search are belong to us. Somebody set up us the bomb!
Let the good 'ole memes roll.
The Scientology experiment.
Reclaiming Google search relevancy metrics!
