If it isn’t requests from the EUs con­tro­ver­sial “right to be for­got­ten” rul­ing, then it’s algo­rithm updates tar­get­ing con­tent pira­cy. Last week we saw the lat­est Google update, which is designed to make it more dif­fi­cult for sites infring­ing on copy­right to be found in organ­ic search results. As com­pa­nies includ­ing Google con­tin­ue to mod­i­fy their prod­uct to stay with­in the law, the ques­tion is: are they los­ing their cus­tomer-cen­tric focus?

Once upon a time, Google arguably dis­played the best results for the user. But are we mov­ing into a more cen­sored envi­ron­ment?

What is next? Might search engines remove user-gen­er­at­ed con­tent (e.g., reviews that don’t por­tray a prod­uct, or brand in a favor­able light) in the future?

Google updat­ed its anti-pira­cy algo­rithm update on Oct. 21. The goal of the update is to make it hard­er for Google’s bil­lions of users to find search list­ings for sites which are alleged to infringe copy­right­ed mate­r­i­al. This update comes only weeks after Robert Thom­son, chief exec­u­tive of News Corp, pub­licly attacked Google, call­ing it “a plat­form for pira­cy” in a let­ter to the EU that demand­ed Google do more.

Google seems to be remov­ing more con­tent from organ­ic search results. How­ev­er, what effect will this have on users? Where will fil­ter­ing search results end?

Removing Links To Copyright Content

Google have been remov­ing more links to copy­right­ed con­tent from its search results over recent years, as detailed in their Trans­paren­cy Report

A Summer Of Landmark Legal Rulings

This lat­est Google anti-pira­cy update comes after a sum­mer of con­tro­ver­sy fol­low­ing the Euro­pean Court of Jus­tice rul­ing against Google, in a case brought by Mario González, for dis­play­ing links to infor­ma­tion which infringed his pri­va­cy. There is cer­tain­ly a grow­ing trend of search engines being found account­able for the results they return to their users. Also more peo­ple seem pre­pared to take on the goliath that is Google.

There were even more land­mark legal rul­ings against free­dom of speech, and search engines in July. A French blog­ger was fined over a review which ranked too promi­nent­ly in search results after a restau­rant own­er suc­cess­ful­ly argued it was hurt­ing their busi­ness.

What Does This Mean For The Consumer?

It’s fair to say web­sites that infringe copy­right­ed mate­r­i­al are a pret­ty clear-cut case, with regard to the law in most coun­tries. As such, it’s doubt­ful that many peo­ple would object to Google’s pira­cy fight when fil­ter­ing makes it hard­er for peo­ple to prac­tice ille­gal activ­i­ties.

How­ev­er, what effect does this has on users find­ing the con­tent? Peo­ple always find a workaround to access tor­rents, for exam­ple, even it’s made a lit­tle hard­er. For every site that is blocked, anoth­er 10 are there ready to take its place.

Even going back to the days of Nap­ster, the MP3 shar­ing peer-to-peer ser­vice, there were plen­ty of oth­er tech­nolo­gies which facil­i­tat­ed the trans­fer of copy­right­ed mate­r­i­al. The only dif­fer­ence being that they didn’t get the same media atten­tion, main­ly due to Nap­ster’s size of 80 mil­lion reg­is­tered users. So it comes as no sur­prise that Google is cen­ter of atten­tion because of its dom­i­nant mar­ket share.

What Will Be Filtered Next?

Right now, Google only fil­ters organ­ic search results for indi­vid­u­als who are able to demon­strate that their pri­va­cy needs pro­tec­tion, and when copy­right-own­ers expose web­sites that are host­ing pirat­ed con­tent.

One of the things I love, respect, and val­ue the most about the Inter­net is the free­dom of speech. We’ve already seen a shift in Google being more account­able for the links it dis­plays to users, even though it doesn’t cre­ate, or host the con­tent.

What’s next for cen­sor­ship? Will com­pa­nies start to request bad reviews of their prod­ucts, or ser­vices also be removed from Google, and maybe even web­sites talk­ing about them?

Will User-Generated Content And Reviews Be Next?

Cus­tomer reviews are very influ­en­tial to con­sumers dur­ing the pur­chas­ing process. Neg­a­tive reviews are as impor­tant, if not more impor­tant, than pos­i­tive ones.

How­ev­er, what if com­pa­nies are able to request that unfa­vor­able reviews be removed from search engines in the future? How would con­sumers find these less favor­able reviews and make an informed deci­sion?

If users lose trust in Google’s abil­i­ty to return accu­rate, unbi­ased search results, both Google and its loy­al users may ulti­mate­ly lose.

Where will the cen­sor­ing of search results end? Share your thoughts in the com­ments.