Google has agreed to remove – without notice, public debate or scrutiny – more than 100 racist sites from its database when that database is accessed via Google’s French and German gateways (google.com retains the sites).
Since for many people the results they get from Google effectively constitute their “window” onto the Internet, this decision is deeply disturbing. It is one thing for people to deliberately choose to filter out search results from their own searches (or that of their children) using “safe search” engines like the BBC’s, but until this research was published in Harvard, these search restrictions were taking place without people even realising it.
To me, possibly the best way around this problem would be to present websites containing the most offensive material with a warning and a link to a site containing counter-arguments alongside it.
In the case of child pornography sites, if one could expunge those links manually from search engine databases without removing other, legitimate sites, I would certainly be tempted to try…
