Where's the free speech outrage when Google, the Internet's Ultimate gatekeeper, blocks free speech on the Internet in clear violation of the FCC's net neutrality principles?
- Many bloggers "received a notice from Google last week saying that their sites had been identified as potential “spam” blogs. “You will not be able to publish posts to your blog until we review your site and confirm that it is not a spam blog,” the Google e-mail read" per the New York Times Bits blog by Miguel Helft.
Google's well-known dominant share of the search market makes Google the Internet's primary gatekeeper and self-appointed organizer of the world's information. As I have written repeatedly, Google has more unaccountable power over the world's information than any entity in the world, see here, and here.
Why do the media listen and report on Free Press, Public Knowledge, and other consumer groups when they make a federal case out of alleged net neutrality violations by broadband companies, but are totally silent when Google violates the very principles they allege to cherish and fight for?
- For example,
- The Washington Post and others reported Pearl Jam's accusations that AT&T blocked their free speech, an isolated incident that was immediately corrected.
- The New York Times reported in their newspaper that Verizon blocked free speech by mistakenly denying a text messaging short code to NARAL, which was corrected in less than 24 hours.
- The AP and others made a big issue of AP's investigative report that Comcast allegedly blocked free speech of Bit torrent when Comcast engaged in reasonable network mangement to prevent network congestion from harming quality of service.
Where is the press coverage and outrage from supposed free speech protectors, when Google, the most dominant Internet gatekeeper, blocks free speech and the FCC's net neutrality principles?
There is a well established pattern of Google not being neutral and blocking free speech:
- Google blocks only certain bloggers content as potentially spam.
- Google Adwords charges slow-loading sites higher access prices than fast-loading sites.
- Google banned anti-Moveon ads which prevented a U.S. Senator Collins from buying Adwords to respond to attacks from Moveon.org.
If free speech and net neutrality are truly important principles, where is the outrage when Google, the Ultimate Internet Gatekeeper, excercises its market power and blocks free speech and does not act neutrally like Google insists everyone else act?
