Is Google Playing Stupid Or Is IT Actually Stupid?

Google is engaging in unreasonable manual action penalty and censorship of blogs in India and abroad. There are many blogs that have been censored by Google to further its own commercial interests with active disregard to civil liberties and freedom of speech and expression.

For instance, the following blogs have been demoted and subjected to manual action penalty by Google without any reason and justification:

(1) Cyber Forensics In India

(2) Cyber Security In India

(3) E-Discovery Services In India

(4) E-Commerce Laws And Regulations In India

(5) Perry4Law Techno Legal Base (PTLB)

(6) Corporate Laws In India

(7) Techno Legal Online Dispute Resolution Services, etc.

Of late, Google has started playing ignorant and stupid while handing DMCA complaints. Google is removing the contents of copyright holders and DMCA notice sender instead of the infringer’s posts/search results.

There are many reasons for censoring and manipulation of SERPS, news and blog results by Google.  Further, there are methods that Google uses to filter, manipulate and censor contents.  

Google has once against played stupid despite many communications from our side that clearly mentioned about the original source of copyrighted article and copyright infringing material.

Google has once again removed the original and copyrighted article instead of removing the copyright infringing material. Our article titled “Cyber Security Capabilities of India Must be Strengthened” has been shifted to draft folder by ignorant employees of Google.

It is high time for Google to stop these negative tactics that its employees are openly engaging in and do the needful as required by DMCA law and other applicable laws.

Cyber Security Related Blogs And News Censored By Google

Google has once again demoted and censored many blogs in India. The chief among them are Cyber Forensics in India, Cyber Security in India, E-Discovery Services In India, E-Commerce Laws And Regulations In India, Perry4Law Techno Legal Base (PTLB), Corporate Laws In India, Techno Legal Online Dispute Resolution Services, LPO and KPO in India, etc.

This is not the first time that Google has done so. According to media reports, Google is engaging in illegal blogs and news censorship in India. There are many news that has been censored by Google from time to time. The latest to add to this list is the news article titled “Cyber security in India is needed”.

For some strange reasons blogs and news pertaining to cyber security and cyber forensics have been openly censored by Google. The reason for the same is still unknown but Google is definitely aware of what is happening in its house.

This episode also gives rise to a question-is Google manipulating and abusing its dominant position and is engaging in unfair trade practices? Perhaps the competition commission of India and federal trade commission of US must initiate an investigation into this practice of Google.

Google Censored and Demoted More Blogs In India

It seems the affairs of Google are well beyond its control. From news censorship to blog censorship, Google has been doing it all. Initially it used to be a piecemeal work but now Google has been indulging in mass censorship and mass demotion of blogs.

Manual action penalty by Google is in abundance these days. However, what is surprising is the fact that Google is indulging in illegal and wrong manual action penalty and blogs and news censorship.

Even worst is the aspect that Google never discloses the reason for such censorship and manual penalty. The aggrieved person has no remedy to agitate against the wrong doings of Google.

The following websites have been demoted and subjected to manual action penalty by Google without any reason and justification:

(1) Cyber Forensics In India

(2) Cyber Security In India

(3) E-Discovery Services In India

(4) E-Commerce Laws And Regulations In India

(5) Perry4Law Techno Legal Base (PTLB)

(6) Corporate Laws In India

(7) Techno Legal Online Dispute Resolution Services

The list is just illustrative and we are investigating the issue. We would come up with more details in this regard very soon.

Google Censored Another News In India

Power companies in Delhi are openly engaging in excessive and exorbitant electricity bills charging that is not legally due to their customers. In the past, Tata Power Delhi Distribution Ltd (TPDDL) was punished by DERC for similar reasons.

This illegal money making exercise of power companies of Delhi is happening with active support of Delhi government that has not taken any action against the defaulting companies despite many complaints and protests.

Even the assurances of Delhi’s chief minister Sheila Dikshit proved nothing more than lip service. However, if this was not enough Google has been censoring news pointing towards such corrupt practices happening in open in Delhi.

Google has censored the news titled “Power Companies Defying Delhi Chief Minister’s Directions” at the instance of some of the power companies who do not wish to be exposed. Even the hand of Delhi government in it cannot be ruled out. This censorship exercise is not only wrong but is clearly illegal on the part of Google as it has not provided any intimation or/and option to counter false claims of such power companies.

Google has been censoring news in India for long and we believe it is high time to send a notice to them and ask for proper explanation in this regard. This is so because if Google is following Indian laws then it has to comply with the same for all purposes. On the other hand, if Google is following US laws then there is an obligation on its part to provide an opportunity to the aggrieved party to represent his/her/its case.

The unilateral action of censorship on the part of Google is therefore clearly illegal and needs to be checked legally. We are working in this direction and would update our viewers very soon.

Google Continues To Censor News In India

Google has been engaging in censorship and filtering of results in India for long. This includes censorship and filtering of blog posts, news, robots restrictions, etc. The latest to add to this list is the news article titled “Radia Tapes, Ratan Tata’s Privacy, Fundamental Rights and Public Interest” that has been censored on 05-09-2012.

The news article in question has nothing controversial but it is discussing about some of the most corruption related aspects of India. Perhaps, the article has brought out in public the dirty linen of Indian government but the censorship act of Google has also brought Google’s dirty linen in public as well.

It seems Indian government is not interested in putting the truth before the public at large. First it claimed that it has destroyed the Radia tapes and then it claimed that the investigation is still going on so the tapes are required to be kept in safe custody.

However, the Indian government has still not told the Supreme Court of India who leaked the tapes. It seems public interest is not important and all the Indian government is doing is hiding of the dirty facts and truths of Radia tapes controversy.

As opined by Praveen Dalal, managing partner of ICT law firm Perry4Law, “The Indian Constitutional Scheme is based upon “Balance of Rights” and no right is absolute in nature. In case of conflict between two Fundamental Rights, the Fundamental Right that strengthens and substantiate the Public Interest should prevail”. Hence if there is a conflict between Right to Privacy and Right to Information/know, information can be disclosed in certain circumstances to substantiate and strengthen Public Interest, opines Dalal.  

It is high time for Indian government to disclose who leaked the Radia tapes. Similarly, the Supreme Court of India must also keep in mind the balance of fundamental rights as citizens of India have a right to know about the corrupt practices happening within the governmental functioning.

Censorship By Google Using Hidden Robots Text File Restrictions

There are various methods through which Google censors and manipulates SERPs, news, blogs and other results. Google rely heavily upon the “crawling methodology” to produce results as per its own requirements. Google may create a 503 error or other such error. However, such an error is apparent if you analyse the webmaster tool.

It seems Google has developed another innovative method of censorship of posts that it finds controversial. Google seems to be manipulating the robots text file (robots. txt) to block even those posts and segments that are not, by design, supposed to be blocked.

The worst part is that it is done in a clandestine manner and you cannot do much even if you thoroughly analyse the webmaster tool.  Today I spend an entire day to understand why the post titled “cyber forensics and Indian approach” was censored by Google.

I analysed the webmaster tool and found the message telling me that the “health” of the blog titled Cyber Forensics in India is not in good shape. The exact message reads “Severe health issues are found on your site - Check site health”. Upon further analysing the problem, the webmaster tool told that “some important page is blocked by robots.txt”.

I first analysed the message that reads “Is robots.txt blocking important pages?” and it returned the message that reads “The page you are trying to reach does not exist (404)”. I then tried to analyse the important page that has been blocked by the robots.txt file and it gave me this page.

Before proceeding further, let us check the standard robots.txt file of Blogspot blogs. The standard robots.txt file in case of the present blog (and all other Blogspot blogs as it is similar except the blog address) is as follows:

User-agent: Mediapartners-Google

Disallow:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /search
Allow: /

Sitemap:

http://cyberforensicsofindia.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?orderby=UPDATED

It is clear that the only thing that has been disallowed by the Blogspot robots.txt file is the /search directory and its sub folders. All other directories and their sub folders are crawlable and accessible to not only Google’s bots but also crawling bots of other search engines as well.

Now when we clicked upon the important page that has been blocked by robots.txt file of our Blog, it took us here. Now this is absurd on at least two counts. Firstly, this is bound to be blocked due to the blocking of search directory so there is nothing unnatural as such. This cannot be termed as a “serious health issue” for the blog.

Secondly, there is no entry or record of the post that has been censored by Google at all. There is no error, either crawling or indexing. There are no malware issues. There are no pages removal issues involved as well.

Clearly, whatever happened to that post happened at the level of Google and Google owes an explanation to us in this regard. We are aware that we are not facing this issue alone and there are tons of examples where these issues have arisen and resolved at Google.

However, we saw no reason for the blocking, filtering, censorship or deindexing of our post. It is time for Google to explain.

Google News Censorship At Its Worst

A recent elaborative news article titled censorship of news by Google is forsaking its do not be evil motto has spilled all the beans about Google’s news censorship activities.

We also believe that Google has been systematically censoring and manipulating news results.

We also believe that posts that are legal and protected as part of speech and expression are deliberately censored and deleted by Google. They resurface again only after publicly criticizing Google in this regard.

The latest to add to this list is the news article titled Vodafone taxation, parliament, international treaty and taxation issues of India.  The same has been reported by the post titled Vodafone taxation dispute in India and censorship by Google.

Like Priyanka Sharma said, the trust and confidence in Google has long eroded and so is Google motto of not being evil. I hope someone at Google is reading these posts and would take notice of the deteriorating standards of Google’s civil liberty protection initiatives and efforts.  

Google Censorship: Vodafone Taxation, Parliament, International Treaty And Taxation Issues Of India

Google has been censoring news for long. There are many posts, news and articles that appeared and at Google  on numerous occasions.

The latest in this regard is the news item titled Vodafone Taxation, Parliament, International Treaty And Taxation Issues Of India. The same was censored by Google within half an hour of its posting.

Google is, engaging in non accountable censorship in India with great disregard to speech and expression.

Can Google And Posterous Defeat Negative SEO By Malicious Competitors?

Negative search engine optimisation (SEO) has been messing up with Google’ search results for long. It is not possible to absolutely stop such malpractices and abuse of Google’s search engine results placement (SERPs) but Google has to tackle such evil practices with an iron hand. For the time being, Google seems to have been defeated by splogs and content farms that are engaging in negative SEO techniques.

These negative SEO techniques are also responsible for poor growth and bad search reflection of many genuine, hard working and original content creating websites. For instance, contents lifted from these original blogs frequently appear at splogs and Google punishes the original blog owner for the wrong doing of the splogger. In fact negative SEO and splogs are the main reasons why Google censors and manipulates SERPs, news and blog results.

Due to negative SEO Google believes that a genuine and original website is engaging in spam and link exchange behaviour but in reality this is not true. But Google still punishes the original and genuine website due to bad and malicious behaviour of others.

Now it seems Google has taken artificial and unnatural links seriously and has issued notifications to website owners to remove artificial, unnatural and paid links. But Google has still not explained how a genuine and original source website owner can get his own copyrighted contents removed from platforms over which neither Google nor the copyright owned content website has any control whatsoever.

The Google artificial and unnatural links strategy is still far from perfect as it has many shortcomings. Further, the DMCA procedure adopted by Google is also slow due to tremendous volume of DMCA complaints.

However, the worst nightmare while dealing with Google is that Google is not willing to take down splogs, contents farms and bad neighbourhoods even when there is clear evidence provided to it in this regard. If a single post is removed after DMCA complaint, the splog would pick posts of other blogs and it would still remain active.

When there is a clear case of continuous and persistent copyright violation by a single individual or organisation, deleting a single post is not the right approach. Google and Posterous have failed to realise this fact while TypePad is doing the right thing.

It would be better if both Google and Posterous removes the offending blogs than the posts alone as a single individual or organisation that is manipulating many platforms does not deserve to remain on the platform. However, for the time being, these splogs, content farms and bad neighbourhoods are fooling Google and Posterous.

Google Is Taking Artificial And Unnatural Links Seriously

Spam blogs (splogs), content farming websites and bad neighbourhoods are big nuisances for not only the blog and websites owners whose copyrighted contents these splogs, etc pick but they are also greatly disliked by the people looking for relevant and authentic results through search engine results placements (SERPs).

This is the reason that search engines like Google regularly take action against splogs, contents farms and bad neighbourhoods. Till now Google’s strategy in this regard was to silently demote these splogs, contents farms and bad neighbourhoods either through algorithms like Panda update or through manual action penalty.

However, by and larger, Google has been defeated by these splogs, contents farms and bad neighbourhoods. If this is not enough, the genuine, hard working and original content producers are punished for the evil deed of these splogs, content farms and bad neighbourhoods. Presently, Google cannot differentiate between original content producers and splogs and at times punishes the original source in its SERPs and search results.

Even after a valid DMCA notice to Google in this regard, Google takes 5 to 7 days to resolve copyright violation claims. This policy and method of Google needs to be changed as soon as possible. Even this policy of Google is illegal as per the Indian cyber law that does not allow such long period to Google and other Internet intermediaries to take corrective and appropriate action.

The only good thing about this entire episode is that now Google has started sending warning messages to websites/blog owners about artificial or unnatural links pointing towards their websites/blogs. We have been doing a herculean task of doing this on our own so far regarding our own websites/blogs and this notification system of Google may save many hours of labour on our part.

Google has recently sent such messages to many webmasters informing them of the Google’s Webmaster Guidelines violations. The idea is to check manipulation of Google’s PageRank. For example, buying links to pass PageRank or participating in link exchange schemes violates Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.

However, Google is still unable to punish splogs, contents farms and bad neighbourhoods that deliberately use negative SEO to harm genuine websites/blogs. Even if proper DMCA complaints and link removal requests are made to Google, it refuses to tale proper action against the offenders and recommends contacting the owner of website directly.

In the Indian context this violates Indian laws and amounts to lack of exercise of cyber law due diligence. Google must seriously think about its Indian strategy in this regard as soon as possible to avoid civil and criminal liabilities.

Legal Response To Google’s Wrongful Blog Takedown Notice

Recently Google negligently issued a Blogger Blog takedown notification. As we create original contents and do not pick others contents, we have decided to take appropriate legal action against the offending party. If it is attributable to the negligence of Google, even Google can be held liable for such negligence.

We have sought more details from Google in this regard so that we can decide our course of action. We have sent the following mail to Google:

“Dear Google

Thanks for your mail.

However, your communication and action is totally misplace and is wrongly executed. We have checked our contents thoroughly and not even a single word has been picked from other platforms.

We always produce original contents and our contents are picked by others.

It seems to be a mala fide DMCA complaint and we wish to take action against the offender. Kindly issue us the copy of the DMCA compliant so that not only can we file a counter notification but also take appropriate legal action against the offender, if any.

Even there is a gross negligence on the part of Google by making the post a draft. Google has neither checked the veracity of the compliant nor has it provided any information to us to check the same.

How can we analyse that we have violated the copyright of any person/organisation if the information is not provided to us? We also could not find any such information at Chilling Effects.

As a matter of fact we believe that Google has committed a mistake by acting in the manner in which it has acted.

Kindly restore our contents to original state immediately”.

Now we are waiting for the response of Google and once such response is received we would decide the future course of action in this regard.

Google Negligently Issued A Blogger Blog Takedown Notification

A company like Google is presumed to be an organised and properly managed one. Not necessarily. Today we received a notification from Blogger platform that reads:

”Blogger has been notified, according to the terms of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), that certain content in your blog is alleged to infringe upon the copyrights of others. As a result, we have reset the post(s) to \"draft\" status. This means your post - and any images, links or other content - is not gone. You may edit the post to remove the offending content and republish, at which point the post in question will be visible to your readers again.”

We produce original contents and we do not lift contents of others. So prima facie the DMCA complaint filed with Google is mala file and wrong. Even Google is negligent in changing the status of our posts as draft without verifying the truth of the claim either itself or with our assistance.

The notice further reads:

”A bit of background: the DMCA is a United States copyright law that provides guidelines for online service provider liability in case of copyright infringement. If you believe you have the rights to post the content at issue here, you can file a counter-claim.

The notice that we received, with any personally identifying information removed, will be posted online by a service called Chilling Effects. You can search for the DMCA notice associated with the removal of your content by going to the Chilling Effects search page and entering in the URL of the blog post that was removed.”

Till now Google has not provided us any information as to how we violated the copyright of any person or individual. Even a search at Chilling Effects has not produced any results. Clearly, Google has wrongfully suspended the posts without application of its mind.

On top of it the notice reads:

”If it is brought to our attention that you have republished the post without removing the content/link in question, then we will delete your post and count it as a violation on your account. Repeated violations to our Terms of Service may result in further remedial action taken against your Blogger account including deleting your blog and/or terminating your account. DMCA notices concerning content on your blog may also result in action taken against any associated AdSense accounts. If you have legal questions about this notification, you should retain your own legal counsel.”

It is clear that there is no copyright violation on our part. Rather Google has been used as a platform to harass us and Google willing complied to do so without examining the truth of the compliant. We would publish our response to Google soon.

Reasons For Censoring and Manipulation Of SERPs, News And Blog Results By Google

In the previous post we have covered the methods used by Google and its Affiliates to censor, manipulate or otherwise tamper with the SERPs, news and blog search results. In this post we are trying to analyse the reasons behind such behaviour of Google and its Affiliates.

The reasons for censoring and manipulation of SERPs, news and blog results by Google and its Affiliates are as follow:

(1) As a direct result of censorship requests from governments and law enforcement agencies of various nations, including India.

(2) To protect the interest of online advertisers who advertise with Google and it Affiliates. If non paying and free services are appearing at the first page of Google SERPs, etc then there is no motivation for paid advertisers to purchase Google’s services.

(3) To help the online reputation management and brand protection Partners and Affiliates of Google. Many times rich and powerful business houses and multi national companies ask Google to remove objectionable and offensive contents from SERPs, news and blog searches. Although Google does not entertain such requests and do not remove the claimed offending contents unless they are legally sustainable, yet manual action penalty and demotion of blogs and websites in such cases is very common practice on the part of Google and its Affiliates.

(4) Intellectual property rights (IPRs) violations may result in not only removal of offending contents but even offending websites and blogs are punished in case of repeated infringements. For instance, blogs on Blogspot platform may be deleted, suspended or demoted depending upon the facts and circumstances of each case.

(5) Splogs and contents farms websites are frequently punished by Google. However, in many cases these Splogs and contents farms are also responsible for punishment of original, genuine and useful websites and blogs. Contents lifted from these original blogs frequently appear at Splogs and Google punishes the original blog owner for the wrong doing of the Splogger. Presently Google seems to have been defeated by these Splogs and content farms.

(6) At Perry4Law Techno Legal Base (PTLB) we have been observing that bad neighbourhoods are deliberately picking up our contents and linking back to us. Google’s algorithm is fooled due to this practice which considers bad neighbourhoods and Splogs as original source of contents and punishes the original and genuine blogs.

(7) Negative search engine optimisation (SEO) also uses the same method as discussed in point (6) above. Due to negative SEO Google believes that a genuine and original website is engaging in spam behaviour but in reality this is not true. But Google still punishes the original and genuine website due to bad and malicious behaviour of others.

We would add more reasons to this list from time to time. If you have any idea or recommendation in this regard, kindly contact us and share your views.

Methods That Google Uses To Filter, Manipulate And Censor Contents

We are compiling a list of methods that Google uses to mess up, manipulate SERPs, blog search and news results. This is based on our own personal experience and research. If you are aware of any method in this regard, kindly contact us and inform us about the same so that we can incorporate the same here.

According to us, Google uses the following methods:

(1) Putting posts in duplicate contents category in news category thereby making it unavailable in the main category.

(2) Temporarily removing the contents from news, SERPs, blog search, etc so that its relevance is gone for contemporary news and topics. Further, this also allows non controversial posts to get a better place in Google’s SERPs and other search results.

(3) Algorithms changes that is an automatic process managed by Google’s bots.

(4) Manual action penalty used by Google’s employees.

(5) Putting posts in blackhole for certain days or for indefinite period.

(6) Rough employees manipulating news, SERPs and blog results, with or without Google’s knowledge.

(7) Removing the news from news search results after a day or two. Normally news remains in Google news search results for a month but Google occasionally removes news within a day or two. For instance, the post titled legal requirements of undertaking e-commerce in India appeared in news and is now not there.

(8) By attaching a 503 “services unavailable” error with the post to be censored and making it unavailable. You can analysis this fact and error at your webmaster tool.

(9) By manipulating the robots text file (robots.txt) and blocking post(s) through such robots. txt file. This is done in such a manner that you cannot find any clue, hint or proof of the same even through the webmaster tool.

We would update the list on regular basis. If you think a particular method should or should not be there in the abovementioned list, kindly drop us a line. We really appreciate the valuable inputs of our readers.

Posts, News And Articles That Appeared And Disappeared At Google

Google’s algorithms and manual penalty are changing the way news, posts and articles appear, disappear or reappear. Some posts in this regard are:

Manual action penalty and censorship by Google

Who is manipulating blogspot blogs: Google or malicious competitors?

Why Google censored cyber laws in India blog

The following posts, articles and news have been manipulated, censored and subjected to manual action penalty by Google:

Legal requirements of undertaking e-commerce in India (appeared in news, disappeared not reposted again) (Method Used By Google: Google attached a 503 “services unavailable” error with the post and thereby censored it)

National cyber coordination centre (NCCC) of India (appeared, disappeared, reposted again at new platform and reappeared again)

Cell phone laws in India (appeared, disappeared, reposted again at new platform and reappeared there)

E-courts and ODR in India (did not appear, reposted, appeared at new platform)

International online dispute resolution (did not appear, not reposted)

Vodafone Taxation, Parliament, International Treaty And Taxation Issues Of India

Google Defeated By Splogs, Content Farms And National Censorships

Despite Panda update of Google, spam blogs (Splogs) are still defeating Google’s efforts to award original contents and punish content scrappers. Many of our original articles are picked on daily basis by Splogs and content farms yet these Splogs and content farm websites remain unaffected by the Google’s algorithms and Panda update. The following posts cover this issue:

Spam blogs are diminishing the quality of Google’s search results

Can Google defeat content farms and Splogs?

Google coming heavily upon Splogs

Further, controversial posts pertaining to e-surveillance and censorship and non accountability of authorities and projects launched by Indian government without any legal framework and parliamentary oversight are also censored by Google frequently in India.

The list of affected posts, news, articles, etc in this category are as follows:

National cyber coordination centre (NCCC) of India

News Results Censorship By Google In India

Google has been censoring news results for controversial topics. Some of the recent posts discussing this aspect are:

Google censored NCTC news and blog posts in India

Google is censoring NCTC and intelligence agencies related results in India

The following news article were manipulated and censored by Google recently:

Legal requirements of undertaking e-commerce in India

NCTC, intelligence agencies and censorship by Google in India

Parliamentary oversight of intelligence agencies of India is needed

National counter terrorism centre (NCTC) of India is required

We would add the latest censored posts at the top of this list in the second para and at the page titled "News".

Websites, Blogs And News Censorship And Results Manipulation By Google

Google has been censoring search results of news, blogs and SERPs for long. However, of late this practice of Google has crossed all limits that can safely call it a civil liberty respecting organisation.

Google has been systematically censoring news, blog pots and websites search results that have been providing critical analysis and reviews about Indian government and its projects.

This initiative intends to cover all such censorship and websites blocking efforts of Google and Indian government at a single place. We have made different categories that are frequently censored in India by Google. These include posts pertaining to Aadhar project, central monitoring system (CMS) project, e-surveillance, human rights, international organisations, Internet censorship, national cyber coordination centre (NCCC), national intelligence grid (Natgrid), news, phone tapping, websites blocking and others categories.

Through this initiative we would try to consolidate all such actions at a single place so that others can rebut or corroborate the same. We hope our readers would find this initiative useful.