Search Engine Corruption: Part Two

Edition #2 – 10/25/2005

This is a part two to my recent post about possible search engine conspiracy theories and corruption in the dark world of search marketing. Another area that I’d like to bring to attention is file sharing. As you probably know, sharing copyrighted media and sites that promote and facilitate the sharing of copyrighted media are basically illegal.

OK, so go to Yahoo and do a “video” search. For example click the video tab, type in “fishing” and hit enter. Of course it returns a bunch of results. Click on one of the results thumbnails. Now in the top frame you have the vieo file and two options:

Play Video | Mail to Friend

I would say mailing to a friend is sharing! Not to mention the fact that Yahoo themselves are displaying copyrighted material on their site. Of course below the options you’ll see the disclaimer:

“This video may be subject to copyright. “

It’s written in gray, and after you’ve done a few searches don’t worry you won’t even notice it any more.

Beyond the file sharing issue, the search engines can reasonably be blamed for the prevalence and ease for minors to view porn. A massive percentage of the search engine’s entire index is dedicated to porn links. It’s ironic and it sucks that its become a huge task just to get a good and clean site listed in a search engine, meanwhile the porn webmasters practically have it made in the shade because they get so many links and so much traffic.

Beyond indexing and ranking the porn, they also make it easy to stumble upon it. If you’re doing a simple web search you can click on any link and you’ll be brought to the page. No warning or verification from the search engine. If you’re searching for pictures or videos, a minor only needs to click on one link stating “yes I am 18 years of age” before doing an unlimited number of searches.

What would happen if brick and mortar porn shops set up their stores next to an elementary school, made it especially accessible to children, and then didn’t require some form of “positive ID” but only put a small sign on the door that said “by entering the door you agree that you are 18”? And when kids walk in, they don’t care because the sign on the door protects them legally.

There would obviously be a public outrage and the sign on the door would not be accepted as a form of identification. Yet that’s exactly what the search engines are doing, only worse. Youngsters don’t have to walk into a porn shop and worry about being seen. They don’t even have to go anywhere.

Of course the argument can also be made that parents need to be responsible, etc, which is true. But it doesn’t undermine the fact that the search engines really don’t care about our kids, they promote evil things, and they are concerned primarily with making money and gaining a bigger portion of the internet pie.