Google Alternative needed to challenge Fascism

The idea that fascism is "limited to government" is outrageous. In Mussolini's Italy, corporations were an integral part of fascism. Fascism is an ideological system. In the same way that conservatism is not limited to the Republican Party, the practice of fascism is not limited to "a type of totalitarian government". Your concept of fascism is arguably extremely simplistic. I could cite many learned scholars who would dispute your assertion that "fascism does not exist in America". Your analysis and appreciation of Google's market power is arguably somewhat simplistic.

Here's just one of numerous citations on fascism in America - - http://www.democracynow.org/2013/6/4/american_fascism_ralph_nader_decries_how

 

I just took a look at the search engine, and I searched on several products, to find the first page completely swamped with the corporate results I would see from Google.
I understand that this is about the corporate mindset and greed of Google itself, but I still would not support a search engine that constantly only promotes the biggest businesses on the first page.

In my opinion, if I were to support an endeavor to move back to something pure, it would need to go back to the days of directories, where rotating lists of sites and pages are presented based on the searching needs of the user, not decided by some invisible "hand of God" and manipulated for monetary gain.

Imagine you're looking for a plumber. You look through a directory either by the word or by location. You then find a selection and check their prices. Job done.
Right now, with search engines, you're given a selection based on whether they've spent enough money on ads, whether they've spent enough money on IT, on SEO, and most importantly, whether they have obeyed the secretive demands of an unelected, unmonitored private corporation thousands of miles away.

If I had a choice, I would rather seek things out in a directory or local web, and spend some time looking at the most relevant companies based on my own criteria, not what some algorithm tells me I want based on the monetary ambitions of a corporation.

 

Random thought....but wouldn't it be interesting if the most recent link clicked for a search string would automatically become the number one result for that term. The rankings would be forever changing, always fresh, and it would all be based entirely on what end users determined was relevant to the search rather than what a bunch of code says is relevant. Granted, you could game this easy by clicking your own links, but assuming that aspect was solved, I would find this concept to be appealing.

 

"Most scholars agree that a "fascist regime" is foremost an authoritarian form of government" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions_of_fascism

Google is not the govt. Next.

I see the fundraising campaign has been an epic fail - 2 weeks and not one $ raised.

 

Haven't they received $$ from the federal government? Weren't they let off the hook by the FTC based on a fraudulent promise? Leaves me wondering the real reason they were let off. Don't they supply technologies to defense contractors? Haven't they been caught red-handed spying on you for intelligence agencies? They may not be a government themselves, but the argument can easily be made that they are part of a government.

I'll also note that the original poster did not say that they are a fascist regime, as you quoted, but said their practices are emblematic of neo-fascism, which is entirely true. Trying to change the label to meet your definition isn't really applicable here, and why would you want to trap your view inside that box anyway?

Next.

 

I think the closest the OP is going to find related to Google and fascism is the anti-Google FairSearch.org - I suppose you could accuse it of "corporate fascism" due to the fact they are a corporate group with a common interest, i.e. lobbying on a political level against Google. That might upset them a bit as they seem to have a chip on their shoulder about Google. But they are not being directed by the government, nor is Google. Google is there to make money and this is what motivates it, just like many other website owners and particularly SEOs. Unsurprisingly, Google needs good organic results to make money (otherwise they would not have the audience they do and no one would want to advertise with them). "How dare they try to improve their organic search results and demote my site due to spamming!!"

It seems to be very popular, particularly those bitter and twisted who have had their sites penalised by Google, to throw around various claims Google this, Google that, Google the other, blah, blah. It all sounds very silly and crybaby-like (just like FairSearch.org). If only they spent as much time on their sites and audience (especially without feeling the need to cheat in some way).

EDIT:

Cite your source. I am very curious about this.

Let off for what? When their competitors cried like babies to the FTC? As per the headlines - the FTC is there to protect competition not competitors.

You mean the fact that they bought a robotics company and are honouring the existing contracts? Look up contract law.

There are so many claims going around whether companies (remember, it wasn't just Google) were involved or not. The fact is, legal requests have been made for a long-time and Google has published this. Some request types were not published, as they weren't legally allowed to at the time. There is a world of difference between spying and providing data when legally required to. With that way of thinking, every company could be considered a "spy".

What credible argument is there? Go on, give it a try.

Whether it is fascism, neo-fascism or corporatism, it still does not describe Google! If you need an example of neo-fascism, go read about neo-Nazis!

 

You make a lot of assumptions about people being penalized, or people spamming. Some of us have never had that problem, we just don't like the beast that this company has become.

 

More often than not it is. Outside of webmasters and SEOs, I only know one person who is wary of Google, but then he is the same with any big corporates or governments.

(I'll also add - not ranking where they want to is another one that seems to commonly lead to bitterness.)

The reality of this world is that companies can become popular and - as a consequence - big. I don't see anything wrong with a company being popular and we shouldn't try to oppose it for that reason. I can understand - as an example - people being against an operating system company that uses restrictive practises to capitalise on their popularity and force people to only use their software products or force hardware manufacturers to only ship their operating system.

 

I have a tendency to be that way myself, particularly since big corporations with deep pockets can influence governments, so maybe that's where my disliking of them comes from. I was a big fan of theirs way back in the day, but that waned over time, and then when I found out they were tracking me for the government it left a bad taste in my mouth, and when they admitted to tracking users to sell the data to ad agencies, it just put me off entirely.

Having said that, as a webmaster they are still the best option when compared to others. Some search strings I look into have 100 million pages indexed by Google, and only a few dozen by Bing. As a webmaster I have no choice but to embrace them for the time being, but as an internet user I rarely go there.

 

Take a look at what happened in the EU - Google is not doing well at influencing governments. It was a totally ridiculous complaint (as every search engine does the same), but they were forced to make changes. They lost a court case against the FTC regarding privacy and had to pay out (it might not have been much for a company of that size, but the point is they lost).

I had a dislike for them (their search results) in the old days when it was a bunch of spammy cloaked crap. I had switched to them from Yahoo!, and before that using good ol' AV, and for a while they were good, much better than all of their competition. After a while, I was getting too many crap results (particularly sites using cloaking). However, after switching to other search engines I found their results sucked too, so I went back to Google. Fortunately, over the years they have sorted out a lot of problems with spam. I still sometimes try out Bing as a friend of mine works for M$ and is always trying to convert me. Their maps are OK sometimes (the aerial views, but it depends on which country), but their search results aren't always as good as Google's. Just now when I visited, they put up a box between the last ad and first organic result inviting me to switch browsers. No thanks! They are still ranking a site I used for spam tests on the first page, in fact it's up to #4 (I haven't done anything to it for over a year now and don't have any ads on it). I call that my litmus test for a search engine (DuckDuckGo failed it too). In Google, it's nowhere to be found (easily), which is as it should be.

 

Which is entirely justified when you have obeyed the "Google God" and done everything by the book, but are still beaten into submission by low quality and shallow pages of the biggest paying advertisers.

I have seen plenty of evidence of this myself. A small retailer can create ten pages of in-depth and informative content about a range of products, but two months later they are still on page three, beaten by Amazon, Ebay, Google advertisers and even YouTube videos. I have seen a direct correlation between paying Google advertisers and their constant position one ranking for key items they are not advertising for, with low quality pages.

If Google actually was working by its own suggested rules of good quality, these small businesses should be killing it in the search results, because they are working 10x harder to create great content in an attempt to compete with Amazon, which adds only 200 - 400 words of content.

There is no getting away from this, Google is not working by its own suggested rules, no matter how many times people try to pretend that it is. If it were, the top position for millions of products would not consistently be filled by only the largest corporations and those who already spend a lot of money on Google ads.

 

yes, i have a simple draft of a better search engine last year summer time. it can work.
current google is too much flaw and nearly 50% of the time is showing the wrong result. try go through the serp result and we found lots of flaws

developing a new search engine is not impossible, its time and money thirsty project.
put up a small engineering team and project, initial estimate for first 6 month will be close to 1 million dollars in cost.

 

I just hope may issue that google is the symbol neo-fasisme is not true.I still supports that google searching machine is information internet best.

 

Fascism arises when a society or government is ruled by a dictator who does not allow dissenting opinions without those critics being met with harsh penalties. Google has placed itself in a position of being dictator over a large cross section of the internet, which acts as a society by definition. Google is also highly authoritarian and clearly goes out of its way to punish those that do not fall in line with their commands.

Another hallmark of fascism is that it typically sees corporations mandating rules to the ruling body. Look no further than Google's interaction with the Federal Trade Commission for an example of this in action.

Is Google fascist? You could very easily make the argument that they are.