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A comment on Reporter: Google successfully pressured me to take down critical story.

Re:Reporter: Google successfully pressured me to take down c... by mcguire on Friday September 01, 2017 @01:54PM (#15150819)
"[In 2011,] Hill was a cub reporter at Forbes, where she covered technology and privacy. At the time, Google was actively promoting Google Plus and was sending representatives to media organizations to encourage them to add "+1" buttons to their sites. Hill was pulled into one of these meetings, where the Google representative suggested that Forbes would be penalized in Google search results if it didn't add +1 buttons to the site.

"Hill thought that seemed like a big story, so she contacted Google's PR shop for confirmation. Google essentially confirmed the story, and so Hill ran with it under the headline: "Stick Google Plus Buttons On Your Pages, Or Your Search Traffic Suffers.""

""I was told by my higher-ups at Forbes that Google representatives called them saying that the article was problematic and had to come down. The implication was that it might have consequences for Forbes, a troubling possibility given how much traffic came through Google searches and Google News.""

Ugh. Google was reportedly throwing their search traffic weight around.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Reporter: Google successfully pressured me to take down c... by deadalus on Friday September 01, 2017 @02:10PM (#15150994)
This is why I am scared to criticize Google. It knows who I am and it knows all the other businesses/websites that I own. It might try to damage/demonetize them subversively if it thinks that I am against it or its owners in any way. There will be no way I can prove it. It also shares it data with the US government.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-Q-Tel

https://gizmodo.com/how-google-gives-your-information-to-the...

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Reporter: Google successfully pressured me to take down c... by e40 on Friday September 01, 2017 @02:28PM (#15151178)
This is why I am scared to criticize Google

You just did, in what followed that comment.

[ Parent | on HN ]