In class the other day, we were talking about Google censorship in China, and the implications of that. While it was believed that this censorship was limited to foreign countries, it was found that Google filters the suggestions that are shown when you type in a query. Immediately, I remembered a "motivational poster" that I saw a few weeks earlier:

Sure enough, this controversy was brought up and discussed in class. Google started out as a small search engine boasting that it had the best searching algorithm to find the most relevant web pages related to your search. However, as the search engine became more popular, Google has become a massive conglomerate of multiple services, such as online maps (Google Maps), advertisement (Google AdSense), and even internet browsing itself (Google Chrome). Google offers services and conveniences that have infiltrated our lives, and Google definitely has a significant impact on people all over the world.
So for Google to show search suggestions for "[____ religion] is", but not showing suggestions for "Islam is", is a huge controversy for many people. But is it really that controversial? Google clearly states in their
help page that they "try to filter out suggestions that include pornographic terms, dirty words, and hate and violence terms." I think it is very possible that the most popular search results for "Islam is . . ." contain hate or violent terms. Remember that when you search for "Islam is . . .", there are results; there just aren't any suggestions. So while many people are saying that Google is censoring out Islam searches, they are just censoring the suggestions - not the results (
or are they?). When people start typing their searches, by default the suggestions automatically appear below, it would be inappropriate to show a series of offensive phrases just because they were popular queries.
Also, we mentioned in class the fact that people accept EULAs for various software without even reading what it is they are agreeing to. Well, somebody took the time to read the EULA for iTunes and Quicktime, and there was an interesting clause in section 8:

How one could use iTunes to produce biological weapons is beyond me, but the fact that they include this in the EULA may imply that in fact there
is a way. I am not suggesting that we go and try, but I thought that this clause in the EULA was very funny, and probably goes unnoticed to most people who have installed the programs (me included).
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