The Clone Wars and Google

By Michael Gray
In Google, Random Thoughts

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So I’m trying to get over my convention cooties and have been sleeping on the downstairs couch for the past few nights. As anyone who knows what they are talking about will tell you there’s no better remedy for what ails you than a bowl of soup a big warm blanket and a science fiction movie, but I digress.

I was watching the part where Obi-Wan Kenobi is in the library searching the missing planet Camino. The librarian comes over and states with air of superiority “If it’s not in the archives, it doesn’t exist“, which got me thinking about Google. What if the best result for your search happens to be on a website that has been banned? I understand the commercial nature of the web and why Google and other search engines do ban websites, but shouldn’t there be a way to include those banned websites? Put a checkbox on advanced search surely that would keep John Q. Public from finding the “bad stuff“. I mean isn’t the mission statement “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful” not “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful as long as it adheres to our webmaster guidelines”.

Next since Google’s so hell bent on absorbing all of the worlds information how about actually building a version of the wayback machine that actually works and is updated with some regularity. As Jim points out the last time it was updated was November 2004. Yeah I know everyone will think you’re just becoming the more of the Google Borg but you are the only company who seems to be interested in it.