[IP] Re: Google vs. Michael Moore's "Sicko"?

[David Farber <dave@farber.net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Anthony Watson <anthony@neo-liberalism.org>
Date: July 1, 2007 7:05:35 PM EDT
To: dave@farber.net
Cc: lauren@vortex.com
Subject: RE: [IP] Google vs. Michael Moore's "Sicko"?


Here I was asking myself this morning why Kurt Loder's MTV.com article
attacking Moore as a money-hungry grandstander kept showing up when I
brought up news.google.com .   Usually those articles churn pretty
thoroughly and a three-day old article is not going to get top  
billing in
Google News, but for some reason over the last three days, every time  
I go
to Google news, I see a link for Kurt Loder's article.

Hmmmm???  What is Google up to?

Perhaps we are about to see a replay of the growing money power of the
hi-tech robber barons as we did in 2000, when I strongly suspect that  
Bill
Gates threw a lot of support into the Bush campaign to prevent his  
company
from being broken up.

Google seems to be really taking a political position and may even be
tailoring its news filtering to support it.  However, I am a little  
baffled
as to the nature of Google's interest in this issue.

Yuck!
~aw

-----Original Message-----
From: David Farber (by way of Anthony Watson
<Anthony.Watson@dollarsandsense.com>) [mailto:dave@farber.net]
Sent: Sunday, July 01, 2007 3:59 PM
To: anthony@neo-liberalism.org
Subject: [IP] Google vs. Michael Moore's "Sicko"?




Begin forwarded message:

From: Lauren Weinstein <lauren@vortex.com>
Date: July 1, 2007 12:38:26 PM EDT
To: dave@farber.net
Cc: lauren@vortex.com
Subject: Google vs. Michael Moore's "Sicko"?



                     Google vs.  Michael Moore's "Sicko"?

                 http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000258.html


Greetings.  In a posting on the Google Health Advertising Blog
( http://google-health-ads.blogspot.com ), that can only be described
as bizarre, a Google "Account Planner" has eviscerated Michael
Moore's new, widely acclaimed film Sicko (see "Does negative press
make you Sicko?" - http://tinyurl.com/yrc7vs ).

The "cure" suggested by this Google employee for Moore's negative
but generally viewed as accurate portrayal of the U.S. Health Care
Industry? Spend more money on placing Google ads!

Seriously, you have to read the posting yourself to appreciate it.

I for one am willing to give Google the "Don't Be Evil" benefit of
the doubt on this one.  I'm assuming that this episode is the result
of a single, uh, "overenthusiastic" employee and not a statement of
broader corporate policy.

But I do believe that it would be quite useful for Google to issue a
formal clarification regarding this rather sicko situation ASAP --
or ideally even sooner!

Bulletin!  A few seconds ago while I was preparing the text above, a
new posting by the author of the original anti-"Sicko" Google blog
entry has appeared ( http://tinyurl.com/2ba6jq ).  Personally, I
don't think that it goes far enough toward clarifying this matter
appropriately.

--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein
lauren@vortex.com or lauren@pfir.org
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800
http://www.pfir.org/lauren
Co-Founder, PFIR
    - People For Internet Responsibility - http://www.pfir.org
Co-Founder, IOIC
    - International Open Internet Coalition - http://www.ioic.net
Founder, CIFIP
    - California Initiative For Internet Privacy - http://www.cifip.org
Founder, PRIVACY Forum - http://www.vortex.com
Member, ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com



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