I don't even think this is accurate. Granted, there is something off about how the terms stall out in instant, but for example as soon as I finish typing bittorrent both instant and auto complete kick back in and show as normal: http://img513.imageshack.us/img513/6820/bittorrentac.png

In contrast, if you type out a sex term it quits instant and auto complete and never restarts them, you must hit enter: http://img7.imageshack.us/img7/7349/asexac.png (mostly safe for work - no results)

I imagine the real reason google is doing this is ad placement. After all instant is just about having the ads up longer. Google "bittorrent" and a standard search term like "real estate" - notice any differences? Yup, they don't sell ads on the bittorrent serp (just like they wont sell adsense on a torrent tracker)

There's no stalling, it's completely disabled and will not suggest anything until you type the entire word.

> In contrast, if you type out a sex term it quits instant and auto complete and never restarts them

So? How does that have anything to do with justifing blocking BitTorrent terms? If I type "install bitt[orrent]" or "install ut[orrent]", I get no suggestions as it is clearly blocked.

(I don't agree that this is right, but it seems the sensible explanation to me)

I think it actually makes sense to hide from autocomplete - because, after all, you don't want to entice people to go for the illegal stuff: If they want to find it, they can. But you don't want to suggest it first thing.

http://www.kalzumeus.com/2009/09/05/desktop-aps-versus-web-a...

Direct link: http://www.bingocardcreator.com/blog-images/piracy-is-dying....

It is more than mildly annoying to have a modern day Clippy looking over one's users' brand searches and saying "It looks like you're looking for software... have you considered stealing it instead?"

That way you might mitigate some of the damage these jerks do to your bottom line.

It is just the psychic nuisance factor: every time I see that box it's like "Come on guys, really?"

(I am resolved to only ever get burned by that once...)

What is weird is that they don't autocomplete 'bitto' to 'bittorrent'. I mean, at that point they already know what they're searching for, why not continue to expedite them?

The query of the title of the Pragmatic Bookshelf book that happens to be open on my desk returns 4 relevant links. The remaining 6 are sites advertising free PDF downloads. Back in the day, one would have to go to a dedicated search engine for these links.

As much as I dislike "Censoring", Google should decide whether it wants to be in the business of providing links to sites that clearly are aggregators for filesharing and fileuploading links to pirated and copyrighted content. The Pirate Bay, et al., can take care of that.

Now, I'm with you that I'd rather that the search results were worse in this specific way, but this sort of thing is surely a direct result of algorithmically optimising search results to present the user with what they're after even if they don't necessarily know exactly how to find it, a general good and a defeating of the sort of SEO techniques we usually complain about here.

In general though - Google already has a 'SafeSearch' function for images, which seems to work tolerably well without complaint. Perhaps a similar system could be introduced both for results and suggestions so that these to illegal content and sites they consider likely to harm my computer could be filtered out by default and only returned if I specifically set the preference or search terms to look for them?

But in this case, they're filtering out perfectly ordinary words for perfectly legitimate network protocols and actual products. If I type "utorren" there's no reason Google should withhold the "t" other that pure evil search-term engineering.

It's incomprehensible to me that a company that refused to filter "democracy" in China will agree to demote "utorrent" in America.

Did I break a rule, is this site overrun with fanboyism, or something else entirely?

"Resist complaining about being downmodded. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading."

The whole "don't be evil" ideal has a two big caveats these days: 1) as long as it doesn't interfere with profits 2) or google's corporate interests.

What miniscule gain in the reduction of uTorrent users or the temporary appeasement of RIAA/MPAA demands could this possibly be worth the debasing of their brand image?

http://uvtblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/why_do_black.j...

http://suggestoftheday.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/gsold....

At least the results aren't as funny. "Chinese people are aliens" is still a google-endorsed suggestion though. WHAT DO THEY KNOW?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog

"kill osama bin laden" appears only with "kill os". Is this an hint of the Google priorities ?

These are obviously rhetorical questions.

Let's say a search engine in China was obligated to "decline actively pushing a certain query", would we not call that censorship? Can someone explain my semantic hangup?

"We don't believe in censoring the web, so here's our promise to you: our entire service will always work 100% to give you what you're looking for."

"When you search with DuckDuckGo, you know that, no matter what you're looking for, you're receiving our very best."

"We know it's not our place to make it harder to search for certain topics, so we'll keep providing you with the best tools for the job, and leave you to chose how to use them."

etc.

I also tried baidu.com, it has no problem suggesting the word completion "uTorrent"...after just "ut"!

That's the only sense I can make out of this.

Then again, I think that I'm just wishfully thinking, not wanting to accept the fact that Google has finally lost its independent mindset and vision of connecting the internets.

The last sentence on the blog sums it up best.

"Google may have been proud to leave China because of its political censorship, but it should be ashamed of promoting commercial censorship worldwide."

I wonder how Google can justify those contradicting actions.

Then again this could be a good thing for competitors. I can see a market open for a "censor free" search engine. Tagline "You're an adult, search like one". Hey... any entrepreneurs feel up for a new startup? wink wink nudge nudge

Pardon, but are you really serious? Disregarding the obvious senselessness of the term "copyrighted illegal content", people search for book titles all the time. People search for software all the time. Half the stuff people search the Internet for is copyrighted or trademarked. The only reasonable way to stop suggesting torrents is to block on the names of torrent software.

Food for thought.

Because they are probably available legitimately somewhere. Or the user might be looking for information about the work, not the work itself.

It's the combination of terms, so if one should be banned to please copyright holders, it almost makes sense to ban the terms of copyrighted works. After all, it's the copyright holders pushing for this kind of filtering.

uTorrent is a great piece of software and completely legitimate application. I have used it to transfer open source and other content all the darn time. Peer-to-peer is a perfectly legitimate network application architecture and it's simply ridiculous that anyone should question it.

Those of you saying "this is effectively meaningless and not censorship" ... well why are they bothering to do it if it doesn't mean anything?

All of you l33t web startup founders had better realize that it may be your network architecture keyword search term that they come after next. After all, these people are fundamentally against the transfer of raw data, whatever its form.

marshray is concerned about Google's move, just like a lot of other people. boredguy8 is obviously not concerned and thinks marshray's concerns are so dumb that they would be better as a joke. But he doesn't say why he thinks those concerns are a joke, he's just condescendingly pointing and laughing and calling marshray stupid. How is that acceptable debate? Like I said it is insulting and useless. If you are going to downvote me please explain what's wrong with what I'm saying.

The fact that they're not actively pushing users to searching for certain bittorrent-related terms may not be a laughing matter, but the way people are responding to it certainly is.

It would sure turn my world upside-down if it ends up that Bing wins takes the "fairest search" title in the minds of the users. But we may be seeing early hints of Google faltering here.

Could there be any connection with the recent executive rearrangement here?

http://www.google.com/custom?hl=en&safe=off&client=g...

so you'll be more successful in terms of search traffic if your client doesn't contain the word torrent!

Just a few months ago they pulled out of China because of censorship, and now they're censoring stuff themselves. Sure it's not Exactly the same, but everything starts with a small precedent. Now that Google is powerful, it first starts off with censoring torrents, then what next? If Google starts to censor and control the outflow of data, it just kills the current perception I have for Google.

This is nothing innovative.

You may not like that it is against the law in many places but (1) legally aggressive companies don't like other companies suggesting their stuff gets pirated and google is a much juicier target than John Doe, (2) it would not help google if Jane Doe brought up google suggesting she download a torrent when she was doing a search to buy the album if Justin Bieber and pirated it instead.

This is just a sound business decision by google, not evil.

typing in "bittorrent" will yield bittorrent.com and 4th result as utorrent. Nothing is filtered.

The author of the article is up in arms because Google has removed "bittorrent" and other terms from auto-complete. In other words, if you type "bittorr" in the search box and pause, it will not suggest "bittorrent" as a completion.

Here's a teacup. Good luck finding the tempest.