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January 15, 2010, 18:12:00 | NP Editor

Googlegate: The search engine may be standing up to Chinese censors. What about Google's own
censors?
By Lawrence Solomon

This week, Google announced an end to its long-standing collaboration with the Chinese Communists -
it will no longer censor users inside China.

That's good of it. Maybe Google will now also stop using its search engine to censor the rest of
us, in the Western countries.

Search for "Googlegate" on Google and you'll get a paltry result (my result yesterday was 29,300).
Search for "Googlegate" on Bing, Microsoft's search engine competitor, and the result numbers an
eye-popping 72.4 million. If you're a regular Google user, as opposed to a Bing user, you might not
even know that "Googlegate" has been a hot topic for years in the blogosphere - that's the power
that comes of being able to control information.

Despite Google's motto of "Do No Evil," it has long been controversial and suspected of
evil-doing - and not just in its cooperation with China, or in protecting itself by hiding
criticism of itself from unsuspecting Google users. In recent months, most of the evil-doing has
focused on the Climategate scandal, the startling emails from the Climate Research Unit in the UK
that show climate change scientists to be cooking the books.

For many weeks now, readers have been sending me emails describing how Google has been doing its
best to hide information relating to Climategate, which has been the single biggest story on the
Internet since the Climategate emails came to light on November 19. By Nov. 26, the term had gone
viral and Google returned more results for "climategate" (10.4 million) than for "global warming"
(10.1 million). As the Climate Scandal exploded, and increasing numbers of blog sites covered it,
the number of web pages with Climategate continued to climb. On Dec. 7, Google's search engine
found 31.6 million hits for people who searched for "Climategate."

Sometime around then, in early December, Google began to minimize the Climategate scandal by hiding
Climategate pages from its users. By Dec. 17, the number of climategate pages that a Google search
found dropped by almost 10 million, to 22.2 million. One day later Google dropped its find by
another 8 million pages, to 14.1 million. By Dec. 23, Google could find only 7.5 million hits and
on Dec. 24 just 6 million. And yesterday, when I checked, Google reported a mere 1.8 million
climategate pages.

Bing, in contrast, didn't make climategate pages disappear. As you'd expect from a search engine
that wasn't manipulating data, search results on Bing climbed steadily until they peaked at around
51 million, where they have remained since.

Starting in late November, Google has been keeping the public in the dark about Climategate in
other ways, too. Ordinarily, when people begin keying in their search terms, Google helpfully
suggests the balance of their text, through an automatic feature it calls Google Suggests.

At the very beginning of the Climategate scandal, before it became huge, Google Suggests worked as
advertised. If someone typed in c-l-i-, Google would have shown them "climategate" on a list of
options. Many people, in fact, learned about Climategate this very way, because most major media
outlets had not yet picked up on the scandal. As Climategate rose in intensity, the term also rose
in prominence on the Google Suggest list - anyone keying in c-l-i would see "climategate" at the
top of the list.

But suddenly in late November, for reasons known only to Google, Google often would not suggest
"climategate" to those who keyed in c-l-i. Even c-l-i-m-a or c-l-i-m-a-t-e-g-a-t weren't enough to
solicit a suggestion. Bing, in contrast, did not and does not steer users away from climategate -
it has consistently suggested "climategate" to those who keyed in c-l-i or even c-l.

For those whom Google can't steer away from "climategate," and who key in all 11 letters to learn
about the eye-opening emails, Google goes the extra yard in keeping people in the dark - it dishes
up a page that trivializes the scientific significance of climategate. Those who click on Google's
"I'm feeling lucky" after asking for "climategate" find themselves on a Wikipedia page entitled
"Climatic Research Unit hacking incident" that downplays the content of the emails and focuses on
the "unauthorised release of thousands of emails and other documents obtained through the hacking
of a server," the "illegal taking of data," the "Law enforcement agencies [that] are investigating
the matter as a crime," and "the death threats that were subsequently made against climate
scientists named in the emails."

For those who don't use Google's "I'm feeling lucky" feature, Google presents them with this
one-sided Wikipedia page as the first item in its search results. Wikipedia actually has a page
called "Climategate" that contains damning information about the scientists caught up in the
scandal but its own censors won't let the public see it - anyone who tries to key in "Climategate"
on the Wikipedia site will be instantly redirected to the Wikipedia-approved version of
climategate, where the scandal is described as nothing more than "a smear campaign."

Why would Google want to tamp down interest in climategate? Money and power could have something to
do with it. Search for Google and its founders and you'll see that they have made big financial
bets on global warming through investments in renewable and other green technologies; that they
have a close relationship with Al Gore, that Google CEO Eric Schmidt is close to Barack Obama.

But search for Googlegate and you'll also see that more than money is at stake. The accusations
against Google of censorship are wide-spread, involving schemes to elect Barack Obama, attacks on
Christianity (key in "Christianity is" and Google will suggest unflattering completions to the
phrase), and political correctness (key in "Islam is" and nothing at all is suggested).

The bottom line? Google is as inscrutable as the Chinese, and perhaps no less corrupt. For safe
searches, you're best off with Bing.

Financial Post

Lawrence Solomon is executive director of Energy Probe and Urban Renaissance Institute and author
of The Deniers: The world-renowned scientists who stood up against global warming hysteria,
political persecution, and fraud.