Google censoring Scandinavian searches?

T

Thowllly

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http://www.ttgnet.com/daynotes/2003/2003-39.html
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Google censorship
Date: Fri, 26 Sep 2003 15:21:57 +0000
From: Bo Leuf
To: Robert Bruce Thompson

Something interesting happened today. Google has suddenly implemented location-dependent redirection, which means that connecting from Sweden, I am no longer allowed to use any other server than Google.se, a localized version. I am consistently redirected, no matter how cleverly I try -- apparently it's IP-block based. It has already been documented that the different localized versions of Google give different hit results and in fact implement "filtering appropriate to the locale" -- in the case of China, outright censorship. Evidently, we are now all to be treated in this enlighttened way.

/ Bo

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: more Google
Date: Fri, 26 Sep 2003 15:31:40 +0000
From: Bo Leuf
To: Robert Bruce Thompson

So what? you might ask, if Google redirects. Surely the filtering, if any can't be that drastic.

Ok, a practical example: I searched for "warp"

Google.se: about 1,650,000 hits

Google.com (going through my USA-based server): 2,390,000 hits.

It's far worse than I would have believed!
Click to expand...

Now I'm from Norway, not Sweden, but I wanted to see if the same thing happened to me. I went to google.com, and was happy to see that I was not redirected anywhere. But when I searched for "warp", I only got 1,650,000 hits! I then visited Google through anonymizer.com, and now the search gave me 2,380,000 hits.

What's going on? Does this happen in other places to? I would be happy if people from other countries could try the same search, and report back with the number of hits and your location.
 
I live in the USA. I went to google.com and searched for warp. Got 2,440,000 results. :)
from anonymizer.com i also got 2,380,000 results. which is interesting,huh? why less results. they could have set their location to be outside the US

Now to the reason that google has implemented localization. If you think your country believes in freedom of speech think again. Many European countries have restricted "free speech". As in try talking positively about nazis. Or try selling nazi/ww2 items on the web. youll be quickly shut down. Thats what happened to Ebay.
here is a quote:

NEW YORK Google.com, which runs the popular Internet search engine, has excluded more than 100 Web sites from the French and German versions of its index under pressure from those countries' governments, a study has found.
Click to expand...
source:http://www.iht.com/articles/74914.htm
I find it interesting that people say europe has more free speech than the US. I guess they didnt know about this. ;)

later,
 
K.I.L.E.R said:
I'm from Australia and I searched for "warp" and got 2,480,000 results.
Click to expand...
i wonder if the difference between the # of results you got and I got, is because we get different google servers.

later,
epic
 
"ass" = 35,000,000 items.

How many do you get Epic?
This is a good experiment.

Here in Australia we shun censorship, maybe some things in America are censored?
 
K.I.L.E.R said:
"ass" = 35,000,000 items.

How many do you get Epic?
This is a good experiment.

Here in Australia we shun censorship, maybe some things in America are censored?
Click to expand...

ass=34,300,000
war=87,300,000

microsoft=63,500,000
linux=97,600,000

hell=16,600,000
heaven=14,700,000

It might be censorship. But my gut says that the google servers we are on are different, but I could be wrong.

later,
epic
 
I got 2,450,000. I do think that this has to do with what is cashed in routers. I don't think it has anything to do with censorship. When you do a search google will sniff around to numerous router cashes DNS servers to see the results of such a search that is how come the results are so fast. If there is no reference to a site then there won't be a hit. In the case of northern Europe I believe it is simply that they are not getting hits from routers that operate in busy areas such as NY LA etc. They are probably going through French or German routers which are lower volume it does however sound as though they are not getting hits from the US. Why? Because they simply are not directed to look there first. I think.
 
I just sent an email about it.

I think it's more likely that the explanation is technical, along with Sabastians theory or similar, rather than outright censorship.
 
google.com

warp = 1,650,000
ass = 23,400,000

also google.co.uk gets same results as above

using anonymizer i get 2,480,000 for warp, (google.com) odd
 
I now think it's technical too. I got 2/3 the number of hits on all the searches epicstruggle listed. I think the european servers simply has only 2/3 the storage capacity of the american ones.
 
Google.dk and google.com resolves to the same IP here in Denmark: 216.239.59.99

This IP doesn't have a reverse (PTR) record. Investigating a little further. Asking the .com root server g.gtld-servers.net (192.42.93.30) for the google.com SOA (source of authority) recordI get 4 nameservers:

ns2.google.com 216.239.34.10
ns1.google.com 216.239.32.10
ns3.google.com 216.239.36.10
ns4.google.com 216.239.38.10

Asking ns2 for the google.com A (address) record yields:
216.239.37.99
216.239.53.99

So they are using DNS round robin resolving. I would imagine google.com resolves to yet other hosts on the other nameservers

Using these IPs directly in the locationfield in my browser and searching for "warp" I get:
216.239.37.99: 2,450,000
216.239.53.99: 2,380,000
The 216.239.59.99 host in the top: 1,650,000

So no need for paranoia. It's just that you get directed to different nameservers, which in turn directs you to different partitions of the google cluster which doesn't seem to be all that synchronized.

Cheers
Gubbi
 
rabidrabbit,

I found something interesting. I did the same searches, and here are my results:

Google.fi (the word "warp") = 2,200,000
Google.fi (the word "ass") = 34,200,000

Google.com (the word "warp") = 2,200,000
Google.com (the word "ass") = 34,200,000

I also tried Google.se and it gave me the exact same results.

*edit: Using the IP 216.239.37.99 which Gubbi posted, I got these results:

warp = 2,450,000
ass = 34,300,000
 
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