Sadly, they control the future of information. Unless something changes.
A reader emails:
Go to google’s site, and enter “AR10”, and click the “Shopping” link. You’ll get numerous results as you’d expect, probably because Google as not figured out that an AR10 is an evil assault rife.
Now try it with “AR15”: “Your search did not match any shopping results”
They won’t even say that it violates their policy. They just make the information disappear.
February 27th, 2018 at 7:22 pm
Just started using https://duckduckgo.com/ today (after seeing Clair Wolfe post about it today), works well. Also put the app on my phone to replace the stock browser.
February 27th, 2018 at 7:40 pm
They apparently don’t know about the evil AK47 either.
February 27th, 2018 at 9:25 pm
Google is no longer a reliable source for search, which is their core product.
Alphabet will slog along and die the usual death, slow at first, and then suddenly.
February 27th, 2018 at 9:52 pm
They really are begging for regulation to control their censorship.
February 27th, 2018 at 10:13 pm
I noticed that fascist Feinstein’s bill listing of banned guns didn’t include the M1A. Perhaps because of its conventional appearance with a woodstock and is used by Honor Guards.
February 27th, 2018 at 11:04 pm
I’ve been using Opera with it’s built VPN (that doesn’t leak) with Duck Duck as recommended some time back Ms. Wolfe.
February 27th, 2018 at 11:20 pm
Google has been a problem since before I dumped blogspot in favor of WordPress. Not that WordPress is perfect.
They mess with the search results. (The last time it made the rounds the search for “American Inventors” was wildly different if English or Spanish was your language of choice.
STOP using Google.
I still use gmail, but not for anything important.
I quit using blogger/blogspot.
I quit using their search engine.
Opera, or Vivaldi, or Firefox are all good browsers not under the control of Google.
DuckDuckGo is fairly good search engine. It lets me down once in a while, and I have to use Bing. But not google.
February 27th, 2018 at 11:22 pm
Though a check today indicates they may have backed off on that given the bad press they got.
February 27th, 2018 at 11:50 pm
A search for “AR” turns up many results that have “AR15” or “AR-15”.
A search for “ar 15” “ar15” “ar-15” “AR10” gets:
Your search – “ar 15” “ar15” “ar-15” “AR10” – did not match any shopping results.
A search for “ar 22” “ar22” “ar-22” “AR10” gets several pages of results. Only difference “22” instead of “15”. Looks like a complete block if it detects any variation of AR15, not even returning other results that don’t match AR15.
Rat bastards. If I had not already stopped using them, I’d stop now.
February 28th, 2018 at 12:10 am
But a search for AR-150 DR Drum Cartridge returns
Add in “Sharp” and you still get the “no results” spiel but you also get 3 advertisement links to the very item it said it “couldn’t find”.
February 28th, 2018 at 12:20 am
fixed below
February 28th, 2018 at 12:39 am
Evidently I suck at html. Last try.
Very lame: One of the items returned for the “ar 22” “ar22” “ar-22” “AR10” search was Sharp AR-150DR Drum Cartridge
But a search for AR-150 DR Drum Cartridge returns Your search – AR-150 DR Drum Cartridge – did not match any shopping results.
Add in “Sharp” and you still get the “no results” spiel but you also get 3 advertisement links to the very item it said it “couldn’t find”.
February 28th, 2018 at 11:09 am
Cleaned those up. Was horking the page layout.
February 28th, 2018 at 12:42 pm
They were banning any word with “gun” in it yesterday, including things like “Laguna Beach”. Also Sex Pistols or anything with “rifle”.
I love this. It’s going to make breaking them up so much easier, provided the GOPe doesn’t choke.
Who am I kidding? Of course they’ll choke. They keep hoping to make friends with the cool kids and won’t do anything that gets in the way of that.
February 28th, 2018 at 1:03 pm
If I go to the “All” tab, I can get all kinds of results – even for those selling such as ch*aperth*ndirt (dot) com.
I never chose to filter my results because I am usually looking for information, not to buy stuff.
Doesn’t mean I agree that their shopping tab is doing it right, just saying they aren’t filtering every search.
February 28th, 2018 at 1:45 pm
While we’re speaking of browsers, I figure I should point out TOR. That’s a browser that hides its communication in several layers of wrappers via servers all over the world. Very nice when you want your browsing to be hard to trace. It’s also nice when you’re in an office with a censoring firewall. It may not be good enough to work around fascist countries like Red China — fortunately I haven’t had to test that.
February 28th, 2018 at 7:23 pm
Try Duck Duck Go as a search instead. Google like result accuracy without the political subversion and tracking.
February 28th, 2018 at 7:26 pm
Oops. Someone beat me to it. Yep.
Duckduckgo.com
It’s a lot better for the folks that value privacy.
February 28th, 2018 at 9:45 pm
I’m not having any issues looking up AR 15s I would check and see why you are being regulated.
March 1st, 2018 at 4:13 am
Can’t believe folks are just now realizing Google filters their shopping results; they’ve only been doing that for close to a decade now.
There have been explanations about their weapons “search” policy all over the internet in blogs and gun/knife forums for years and years… it isn’t restricting searches for specific guns, like AR’s, the searches filter results for weapons period.
I used to use Google search to shop for knives, too; but they altered that feature too when folks used the search more for “weapons” than kitchen cutlery.
You can search for any knife you want, but it only returns limited results, so you can’t really use it to shop. Right now you can search for “Boker Plus M2”, and it will list 3 sellers of that knife… there are actually more than 3 dozen retailers selling that knife online.
They just mistakenly think they’re doing their part to limit proliferation.
March 1st, 2018 at 8:48 am
President Trump Asks Dianne Feinstein to Add ‘Assault Weapons’ Ban to School Safety Bill
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2018/02/28/president-trump-asks-dianne-feinstein-add-assault-weapons-ban-school-safety-bill/
March 1st, 2018 at 7:15 pm
Guess I’m building some AR10s !
pew pew pew
March 2nd, 2018 at 9:54 am
I just used Google to search for AR-15’s for sale and came up with a whole bunch so thats a BS story.
March 2nd, 2018 at 12:42 pm
@ F T
What search did you use, case the above link still returns a blank as do other permutations of “AR 15”. Are you sure you are clicking on the “shopping” tab and are not just viewing web page search results?
I just tested again and I can confirm that google is indeed scrubbing their shopping results for AR 15 stuff. No links to sale items, no product listings, no “featured products”, nothing. Their web search still does list a lot of links, many of them to places that sell AR 15s, but that does not let you compare specific products the way the shopping results do. Google is definitely withholding services for people wishing to do some comparative shopping for AR 15 stuff, and that is what the above post is pointing out.
So no, not a BS story. It may not impact you if you don’t use Google shopping results, but since when does “does not affect me” mean “is not a true and relevant story”?