Rick Santorum is running for president? Hah! The religious right of the Republicans might reckon they’ve found their man in this confrontationist conservative former senator from Pennsylvania, but did they check Google?
Search engines
leaked 
The Google blacklist
Type a word into Google and watch the Google instant search immediately start filtering items letter by letter. But some words — think swear words, porn or anything possibly insulting — doesn’t show any autocomplete options. Check out which words get censored…
BP is here to help, Google told me so
BP is spending $10,000 a day buying out the top adwords on “oil spill” searches on Google. Although it is PR genius, is BP’s manipulation of the information super-highway obstructing the real news?
Startpage: a ‘private’ search engine, but who’ll care?
Despite calling itself “popular”, Startpage isn’t in Nielsen’s top 10 US search sites, which means it’d have less than 0.3% of the search market share. So can it manage to become the new Google?
Former Google employee: How Facebook will crush Google
Former “Googler” Bindu Reddy explains why Facebook will usurp Google as the world’s top internet company — just as Google did to Microsoft, and Microsoft did to Netscape. Google is about searching, Facebook is about discovery.
Google gets a Microsoft make-over
Google has undergone a face-lift — and it looks suspiciously like Microsoft’s Bing. It won’t change your search results, says search guru John Battelle but it will change the way we search.
Game on, Google: Apple enters the search business
Apple has just bought out mobile app maker Siri. But this isn’t just another business acquisition, says Business Insider: it heralds the company’s entrance into the search market.
revealed 
Google maps government censorship requests around the world
Google reveals — via Google Maps, naturally — the number requests to censor content received from governments worldwide, in six months alone. Brazil tops the list, though a big red question mark still hangs over China.
The countries Google is still censoring
Google has been galloping about on its moral high horse since it stopped censoring search results in China — but it’s still censoring results in many other countries, reveals Business Insider.
leaked 
China’s instructions on reporting on Google
Straight from the Ministry of Truth: the WashPo has a leaked copy of the Chinese government’s instructions to news sites on how to report on Google’s decision to stop censoring its search results.
Google: We no longer hate freedom
Google has officially stopped censoring its searches in China today. The company’s Senior Vice President David Drummond explains how and why they did it.
The real reason Google has turned on China
It’s nice to see Google finally adhering to its ethos of “do-no-evil” in China — but the company’s decision end its censorship of Google.cn has far more to do with business than human rights, says Sarah Lacy.
Google ends censorship in China
Google has announced that it will no longer consent to censoring its search engine results in China, and, if necessary, will pull out of the country altogether. This is huge, says Margaret Simons.
Google: No more censorship in China
Following a massive cyber attack on Google in China — part of a broader attempt to access the personal details of Chinese human rights activists — the search giant says it will no longer censor search results on Google.cn — and may pull out of the country altogether.
inside info 
Twitter finally turns a profit
Twitter’s real-time search deals with Microsoft and Google — worth about $25 million combined — will see the company finally turn a (small) profit this year, according to company insiders.
What’s Examiner.com and why is it always in my Google searches?
If you use Google (and you do), chances are you frequently get results from Examiner.com — even though the articles are, frankly, a bit shit. So what’s the site doing at the top of all your search queries? Time explains the technical trickery.
Google unveils its visual search engine
Google has just unveiled its latest search innovation: Google Goggles allows users to take pictures of books, brands, business logos, text and more on their phones, then search for more info. Like Shazam for the entire world.
Google to roll-out real-time search
Remember Google’s deal with Twitter? The web giant’s real-time search is finally ready to go live, but it’s much bigger than just social media…
From the lemon detox diet to Catriona Rowntree’s baby: the top Aussie Google searches of the year
Google Australia name the top words, celebrities, news stories, albums, movies and more that Aussies were seeking out this year. Spoiler: MasterChef-related terms feature heavily.
Microsoft vs. Google, round 567: Bing Maps launched
Microsoft has fired the latest shot in the search engine wars, launching its own map service to compete directly with Google Maps. Bing Maps lets users view satellite maps in 3D, and integrate apps like Twitter to overlay extra data.
The most searched words of 2009
What was the internet searching for in 2009? ReadWriteWeb checks out the year’s top search terms for Google and Bing. Why are so many people searching for Twitter? How hard is “www.twitter.com” to remember?
Has Murdoch just saved the newspaper industry?
The newspaper industry is desperate for cash, and Microsoft — and its search engine Bing — has bucketloads of it to spend. Can newspapers save themselves by selling the tech giant exclusive rights to their content?
Murdoch puts a gun to Google’s head, Microsoft helps pull the trigger
Rupert Murdoch has been threatening to pull all News Corp content from Google, and Microsoft is willing to pay him to do it. But Bing can’t buy all the news — and it might just sell its credibility in the process.
Kristof: Microsoft’s Bing is a Chinese propaganda tool
NYT columnist Nicholas Kristof is calling on his readers to boycott Microsoft’s Bing search engine, because it actively censors search results in China on politically sensitive topics like Tienanmen Square and Tibet.
How Murdoch can really hurt Google
Rupert Murdoch’s recent rejection of Google may be less about news content and more about the search engine wars, suggests Michael Arrington: by de-indexing from Google, other search engines could pay him for the rights to index News Corp content.
