While Google is headquartered in Mountain View, its reach is global. The implications of its actions often take political, social and ethical dimensions. The most recent issue of the day about Google has been its dispute with the Chinese Government about censorship, resulting in Google transferring its search business to Hong Kong.
In February of this year, an Italian court convicted three Google executives because Google was too slow in removing a YouTube video that displayed the bullying of an autistic student by his classmates. Google denounced the verdict and vowed to appeal this ‘astonishing decision.’
While these cases have attracted much media attentions, many individuals have struggled helplessly in attempting to confront the power of Google and its insular nature. Most uses of Google search tools result in useful information. However, there are cases where an offensive piece of information enters the Google cache and removing it becomes a major hurdle. Google promises to remove information such as Social Security Number, bank account number, an image of one’s signature or a reference to a person’s full name appearing in an adult content site that is ‘spamming Google search results.’. However, anything else requires significant skill and perseverance.
In the first place, Google does not publicize to ordinary users how offensive information can be removed. The basic initial step should be to have the offensive data removed from the source, which normally would be a non-Google site. However, Google cache may retain such information for years after the original data is gone. Google promises that 'the next time' that its 'crawler' visits the site the data will be removed. However, no one can predict when the next time will occur.
The other point is that actually Google has several different types of search, each with a separate cache. For example, basic search has a distinct cache from Blog Search. Thus, a separate type of removal request is needed for each.
To request the removal of a site from regular Google search results, go to:
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/removals
To request the removal of a site from Google blog search results, go to:
http://www.google.com/support/contact/?blogsearch=1
The key remaining problem is that for regular searches, one can specify the search terms that lead to the offensive results. For blog search, there is no such feature. Thus, success can be achieved only if the offensive site no longer exists or is blank. This inconsistency is unfortunate and constitutes a major hurdle for certain users.
In review, with its power, Google also has certain responsibilities. If an offensive piece of data is no longer present, it should be much easier to remove it from Google search results than it is possible today.
