We all knew it was a matter of "when" not "if", but it's surprising to see that it had to happen this way. Over on Google Blogscoped, I see that Google Removes Its Help Entry on Censorship:

The page which used to say:

Google does not censor results for any search term. The order and content of our results are completely automated; we do not manipulate our search results by hand. We believe strongly in allowing the democracy of the web to determine the inclusion and ranking of sites in our search results.

Now simply 404s. It's gone. Well, except for the cached copy in Google itself.

Rather than using that page to explain how and why they've compromised their corporate philosophy in China, they've removed it entirely with no explanation.

Now, it's entirely possible that they've written a new page and didn't have the sense to update the old one in-place, thereby breaking the URL. But I've been unable to find evidence of that. Can you?

I guess that giant sucking sound coming from Mountain View this week was the sound of Google's soul getting sucked out to make more room for cash. True Colors indeed.

What a sad week in the world of web search, huh? There was the DoJ subpoena, the "Yahoo gives up on search" scare, and now this. I can only hope that this month is over soon.

Posted by jzawodn at January 27, 2006 08:14 AM