Bigmouthmedia search engine news: ethics

China bans YouTube and Google News

Tue, 18 Mar 2008 12:00:00 GMT

In an attempt to block coverage of a series of demonstrations and riots in Tibet, the Chinese government has banned access to YouTube and Google News, it has been revealed.

Google and its video-sharing site have been targeted in an attempt to stop the spread of video footage and reports, which have been widely publicised across much of the world.

According to CRN magazine, a video entitled Protest in Lhasa is typical of the kind of footage the Chinese government is trying to block.

Google is not alone in being banned in the country. Other media outlets including broadcasts of CNN and BBC World have also been restricted. YouTube has received the most press, however.

Commenting on the issue, CNET News.com states: "The site, which allows individuals to communicate with mass audiences, has become a symbol of free speech to many and governments that forbid it are immediately branded around the world as repressive."

The ban has been reported across the world, with coverage appearing in Russian, Turkish, Irish, US and Canadian newspapers, as well as in other countries.

China is not unaccustomed to such internet blocks. In January, its government tried to impose a rule under which only state-run firms could post videos to the web.

The measure was slackened, however, following criticisms concerning freedom of speech.

Additionally, Google's internet search site was blocked in the country briefly during 2002.

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Yahoo! execs in Congress spotlight

Wed, 07 Nov 2007 12:00:00 GMT

Chief executive officer of Yahoo! Jerry Yang has apologised to the relatives of Chinese dissidents who were jailed in the country three years ago.

The company is accused of assisting the Chinese authorities in their arrest of the men by supplying them with internet user information.

In an appearance before the US House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Mr Yang expressed regret.

He stated: "I personally apologise to them for what they and their families are going through."

In an address to the families, Mr Yang said: "I want to say we are committed to doing what we can to secure their freedom. And I want to personally apologise for what they are going through."

During the congressional hearing, which was described by the Wall Street Journal as "unusually dramatic", Yahoo! was exposed to much criticism.

Chairman of the House of Foreign Affairs Committee Tom Lantos confronted the firm, saying: "While technologically and financially you are giants, morally you are pygmies. This testimony has been an appallingly disappointing performance."

When asked why no one at Yahoo! had been disciplined over what had happened in China, Mr Yang said: "At the end of the day, I feel that everybody was doing the best they can given a difficult situation."

Following the hearing, Yahoo! executives met with two of the dissidents' family members, although it is not known what was said.

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Yahoo!'s executive vice president apologises over China incident

Fri, 02 Nov 2007 12:00:00 GMT

Yahoo!'s executive vice president and general counsel Michael Callahan has issued a statement apologising over an incident which occurred in China in 2004.

The search engine provider has been widely criticised for its alleged part in the arrest of Chinese journalist Shi Tao, who is now serving a ten-year prison sentence in the country for divulging state secrets.

According to US lawmakers, Mr Tao was only arrested by Beijing police because Yahoo! had provided them with his IP address, log-on history, email account and the contents of his emails.

Mr Callahan has apologised for failing to tell US officials in a hearing last year about the company's cooperation with a request made by the Chinese government for user information concerning the journalist.

His statement expressed his deep regret over supplying incorrect information during the hearings.

He stated: "Months after I testified before two House subcommittees on Yahoo!'s approach to business in China, I realised Yahoo! had additional information about a 2004 order issued by the Chinese government seeking information about a Yahoo! China user," the Financial Times reports.

The fact that he neglected to alert the committee of this "new information" led to a deeply regrettable misunderstanding, he added.

Mr Callahan is due to appear at a congressional hearing next week and is expected to testify that a Yahoo! lawyer in Asia failed to brief him on the order because the lawyer believed it to be insignificant.

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Yahoo! unveils its 'Greenest City in America'

Tue, 26 Jun 2007 12:00:00 GMT

Yahoo! has unveiled Hastings Nebraska as the winner of its Greenest City in America Challenge.

The search engine giant announced the top ten US cities in its Be a Better Planet campaign and Hastings secured the $250,000 (£125,000) grand prize.

Hastings residents will now benefit from even better environmental features in their city, as the top prize is being put towards "city greening projects" in conjunction with Global Green USA.

Yahoo! challenged people from over 350 US cities to take action against climate change, using its Yahoo! Green, Yahoo! oneSearch and Yahoo! Answers services.

The company's co-founder David Filo said: "The determined green spirit demonstrated by the people of Hastings, Nebraska, underscores Yahoo!'s belief that individual actions can add up to significant change.

"Cities from the coasts to the heartland rallied together to participate and we're encouraged by how the citizens came together around this important cause."

California proved to be the greenest State, with San Carlos, Mill Valley and Walnut Creek among the top ten.

Yahoo! celebrated Hastings' achievement by hosting a Nebraska-style BBQ at Chautauqua Park.

The city was offered the choice to accept a fleet of new hybrid taxis or the equivalent cash donation and opted for the latter to help improve its environmental programmes.

City Mayor Matt Rossen said: "This achievement has spurred us to become even greener and we thank all of the citizens in central Nebraska who have supported us and helped promote this great city and state in which we live."

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Google aims to go green by the end of 2007

Wed, 20 Jun 2007 12:00:00 GMT

Google is set to go green after representatives confirmed that the search engine would be voluntarily offsetting its carbon emissions.

The firm says it plans to use renewable energy and purchase carbon offsets for all emissions it cannot reduce directly by the end of 2007.

Eric Schmidt, chairman and chief executive of Google, said: "By investing in new technologies and by working in partnership with others, we can make a meaningful contribution to the environment.

"This is just a start. We are actively looking for more opportunities to help tackle climate change."

The firm also says it plans to make a commitment to other projects, such as helping to combat the use of methane from animal waste on farms in Mexico and Brazil.

In order to fulfil its plans, the search engine has joined forces with environmental organisation The Climate Group, which will help Google to implement its new policies.

Three main objectives have been put forward as part of the plans including making greater use of renewable energy, cutting the firms energy consumption and offsetting emissions.

Steve Howard, chief executive of The Climate Group, said: "Google's commitment to invest in environmental innovation, combined with their worldwide reach - will significantly help promote and accelerate international action on climate change."

This move represents the latest in a series of green developments from Google. Earlier this week, they announced their plans to support RechargeIT's green car scheme, while last week saw Google join the Climate Savers Computing Initiative.

Moreover, bigmouthmedia published a story on Google's green credentials earlier this year, which considered the effects of the amount of power used by Google's server farms.

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Google throws its weight behind green car initiative

Tue, 19 Jun 2007 12:00:00 GMT

Google has announced the launch of the RechargeIT initiative, which aims to reduce CO2 emissions and oil dependence by backing the adoption of plug-in electric vehicles.

The search engine giant's philanthropic arm, Google.org, is set to fund $10 million (five million pounds) to accelerate the development of the technology for the green hybrid "plug-ins".

Google also revealed that it has switched on the solar panel at its Mountain View headquarters, to help power its plug-ins with solar energy and reduce its overall environmental footprint

Dr. Larry Brilliant, executive director of Google.org, said that clean energy can "dramatically shift" how energy is made and used in powering cars and homes.

He also suggested the method of selling power back to the electric grid and using renewable energy sources can quadruple the fuel efficiency of cars and improve grid stability.

"Google is committed to using its resources to help solve the global climate challenge," he explained. "RechargeIT brings together all of these elements to help accelerate progress on plug-ins.

"By demonstrating new clean energy technologies and how they can be connected to the grid, we hope to spur demand and encourage car manufacturers to make these vehicles commercially available on a large scale on an urgent basis."

Google has been throwing its weight behind a series of pro-environment projects recently, including the Climate Savers Computing Initiative.

The search group announced it has joined forces with a host of IT industry leaders, such as Intel and Microsoft, to drive energy-efficient computing and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

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Google joins major Climate Savers Computing Initiative

Wed, 13 Jun 2007 12:00:00 GMT

Google, the world's most popular search engine, has announced it is joining forces with a number of leading IT firms to tackle emissions.

The broad effort has been put together to drive energy efficient computing, in a bid to save $5.5 billion (2.8 million pounds) a year in energy costs.

Google has joined forces with Microsoft, Dell, Intel, IBM, Lenovo, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and many more firms to launch the Climate Saver Computing Initiative, which also hopes to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 54 million tonnes per year.

Google revealed that the goal of the new initiative is to save energy and reduce emissions by setting "aggressive new targets for energy-efficient computers and components".

Urs Hölzle, Google's senior vice president of operations, said: "Today, the average desktop PC wastes nearly half of its power and the average server wastes one-third of its power.

"We are asking businesses and individuals throughout the world to join with us to institute better power management of their computing equipment and purchase energy-efficient computers."

According to Pat Gelsinger, senior vice president and general manager of Intel's Digital Enterprise Group, the initiative will cut emissions in an equal amount to removing 11 million cars from the road by 2010.

Computer and component manufacturers supporting the drive will have to meet EPA Energy Star guidelines when building new energy-efficient products.

John Donoghue, senior vice president for the WWF, said it was the first time the Climate Savers programme had been applied to an entire sector, adding: "We are pleased to join these industry leaders to provide solutions to address climate change."

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Google pacifies EU watchdog

Tue, 12 Jun 2007 12:00:00 GMT

After previously being taken to task by the Article 29 Data Protection group based in Brussels, Google has recently voluntarily agreed to cut the time it retains private user data to 18 months.

This figure represents the lower end limit of the 18-24 month period originally forwarded to the regulators last March - but with the proviso that Google were doing this to prevent any further cuts to the allowed time period, due to the fact that this would undermine the quality of Google's products and ability to analyse these products over time.

Peter Fleischer, head of Google's global privacy counsel, commented:

"After considering the Working Party's concerns, we are announcing a new policy: to anonymise our search server logs after 18 months, rather than the previously established period of 18 to 24 months."

The server logs refer to software that stores web search histories. He added:

"We believe that we can still address our legitimate interests in security, innovation and anti-fraud efforts with this shorter period."

As always, Google has sought to take the lead in establishing best practices, industry rules and global norms, in this case with respect to the acquisition and retention of online user data. Most data gathered by Google is retained by cookies which track user habits in all sorts of ways.

The EU industry watchdog has expressed concerns that information about a user's habits and searches could be potentially used by unscrupulous advertisers and possibly even by those attempting smear campaigns. However, Google remains firmly adamant that it never shares personal information outside of the company.

The announcement comes shortly after UK watchdog Privacy International slammed Google's commitment to privacy in a report released over the weekend.

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Google puts a stop to essay writing adverts

Wed, 23 May 2007 12:00:00 GMT

In a response to continued complaints from universities that the web has promoted plagiarism and directly affected the integrity of university degrees, Google is to ban any adverts for essay writing services from its network.

In the near future, Google will block any adverts for "academic paper-writing services and the sale of pre-written essays, theses and dissertations". Essentially the essay writing companies - of which there are many - will join a blacklist of unacceptable content, which includes any advertisements offering weapons, drugs or miracle cures.

The range of services that these essay writing companies offer can stretch from simple one-off generic solutions to bespoke and tailored answers that could cost the student up to 5000 pounds or more. Written by freelance essayists - and sometimes even other students - it's clear that universities can longer consider plagiarism as simply a case of one student copying another's work: it's an issue that's now significantly more serious and, as a result, harder to detect.

Unsurprisingly, the companies that offer such essay writing services are unimpressed at the move taken by Google and see it as a threat to legitimate businesses, which stress that the students who use their services must not do so dishonestly. Such services are said to benefit foreign students who may not be able to match the quality of their classmates. It's not difficult to imagine, however, that the majority of academic institutions would question any service which relieves the student of a structured workload.

Universities have applauded the ban as a responsible and proactive step to curb the reportedly high level of plagiarism that has been affecting institutions across the world. The top universities spend small fortunes on plagiarism software that is designed to spot any dishonest work, encouraging the bespoke essay writing services to go to great lengths to stay ahead of any software designed to catch their essays.

Universities UK has formally welcomed Google's decision to ban the essay writing adverts. In a statement, Professor Drummond Bone, President of Universities UK said:

"Making life harder for these cynical web 'essay mills' is a step in the right direction. We feel strongly about this because plagiarism devalues the efforts of students who work hard to achieve their degrees."

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Yahoo! going Green in climate change bid

Mon, 14 May 2007 12:00:00 GMT

Yahoo! is following up its plans to become a carbon neutral company by the end of this year by launching an eco-friendly online education programme.

Entitled Yahoo! Green, the site will provide users access to the latest environmental news and tips to help people combat climate change both personally and socially.

By encouraging change among its 500 million monthly users, Yahoo! will be continuing its corporate effort to cut greenhouses gases and improve operations.

It will begin in the US but is expected to be rolled out to other international markets and co-founder David Filo has revealed that he believes a number of small efforts could go a long way.

"What is the biggest way for us to have an impact? The biggest way by far is to get this message out to half a billion people," Mr Filo told Reuters.

"We want to make it easy for consumers to do something as well as help them build enduring habits that can truly make a difference. We believe many small individual actions can add up to significant change."

Yahoo! Green users can choose actions to reduce personal carbon emissions from a menu and the site will encourage people to participate by taking positive actions, like reusing shopping bags and taking public transport.

What's more, Yahoo! will reward the city where the most users sign up and take the environmental pledge with ten new Ford hybrid cars to be used as taxis.

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