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Oz Regulator Targets Google’s Head Office
by Kismo Wednesday, Oct 3 2007, 11:37am
international / social/political / commentary

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has dropped its actions against subsidiary arms of Google with the view to target the parent company in the U.S. The change in tack occurred after Google U.S. accepted responsibility for its subsidiary arm in Australia.

The Oz regulator is alleging intentional interference in so-called ‘organic’ search results in favour of paying customers. While there is nothing wrong with favouring paying customers in business, the Oz regulator does not allow companies to misrepresent their actions. In this case claiming that ALL search results are based on relevance or popularity rather than commercial considerations.

One wonders how Google with its appalling track record in China could possibly prevail in this case. Altering search results according to the wishes of communist dictators, which actually disguises the fact that Google manipulates search results in order to capture markets and gain income, is a matter of record – history and the facts speak for themselves. But the Law is an ass and Google may yet prevail against the Aussie regulator on legal technicalities.

Nevertheless, almost the entire IT world is aware that Google manually intervenes in search results; rumours of site grey and black lists abound but rumour is no substitute for fact or reality. In this regard the “Cleaves Alternative News” site is able to prove the point. The site once enjoyed extremely favourable organic search results, however, for some months now the site has been de-listed from Google ‘News’ and ‘Blog’ searches and is slowly fading from view in general web searches. Manual manipulation or intentional intervention by Google is DEMONSTRABLE and clearly proves the unfair and self-interested designs of Google in its quest for total information control -- be advised!

We encourage readers to verify results and claims for themselves; simply input ‘cleaves.zapto.org’ without the inverted commas, in the search fields of Google, MSN and Yahoo search engines and prove the point for yourselves -- the Microsoft search provides an interesting and humorous result!

The Cleaves site has become a medium for exposing Google’s unfair and undemocratic practices; a quick on-site search accesses all relevant articles/posts.

We [Editors] derive immense satisfaction from the fact that a peppercorn ($1) site, dependent on grass roots support and unpaid article contributions, is able to affect a $170 billion corporation pursuing world domination in PUBLIC information ‘management.’ No private interest should ever be allowed to succeed in that aim!

The Cleaves site web log recently attracted a very peculiar result in the search engine “keyphrases” section, which I include for your evaluation:

“in the past years google has expanded at a breakneck pace and currently has some 13 700 employees. the company thrives on a culture of innovation the best example is that it asks employees to dedicate 20 percent of their time to develop ideas for the company.”

“Further, the world-first case has the potential to set a global precedent over the extent to which a company can use a competitor's name to attract customers in search engine advertisements. The judgment will affect not just Google but all search engines.”

http://www.smh.com.au/news/web/accc-drops-case-against-google/2007/10/04/1191091237961.html