Anti-Google Campaign By Lenz?
Dr. Karl-Friedich Lenz, professor at Aoyaman Gakuin University in Tokyo, has been on a bit of an anti-Google tear of late. Today, citing major reservations about Google related to Autolink and Web Accelerator, Dr. Lenz posted a statement, that said in brief:
Two months ago, I had Google as the homepage of my web browser. It would have been fair to describe me as a fan of their service.Now I have decided to shut them out completely from my website, which I declare a “Google-free zone”…
… I have been opposed to any large-scale collection of Internet traffic data for years.
… it is absolutely unacceptable to try building the world’s largest Internet traffic data collection under the misleading excuse of speeding up web surfing. This calls for active resistance to Google, which deserves to be put completely out of business for this move.
This was followed by adding an anti-Google portion to his blog license:
Permission for such commercial use is expressly denied to Google. I object specifically to inclusion in their cache and access to my pages with the “Google Web Accelerator”.
as well as banning Google’s crawlers in his robots.txt file. The most extreme act, however, was adding code to his server that rewrote all traffic from Google to Yahoo. That means that if you click on a link in the Google search engine that points to his site (in spite of the robots.txt, this still does occur), instead of sending you to the page linked in Google, you will be sent to Yahoo.com, effectively sabotaging Google search and infuriating anyone who uses Google to find any information about him or information he is considered an authority on. Given that his blog has a PageRank of 7, and his website has a PageRank of 6, this is no small matter.
I can verify that this does work. Just click here and click on any result. Just make sure not to click through to any page you’ve already visited; those links might still work because of caching. You can read how he did it here.
Because Google considers his site important (since other sites do), Google must keep links to him in the index with the proper PageRank, even if their crawlers cannot read it. Yet, every time Google lists these important pages, Google will simply be sending searchers to the wrong site; not just not sending them to the site they wanted, but sending them to their competitor. An action like this “breaks” Google very effectively. Google would have some serious problems if this ever became a trend.
Since I disable referrer logging in my browser this does not affect me.
Comment by Jason | May 15, 2005
Doesn’t work for me either. I too have reffering logging off, on my firewall.
Comment by Maverick | May 15, 2005
Probably I don’t understand Google well enough.
I was under the impression that if I do everything I possibly can to shut them out from my content they can’t keep any links to me in their search results and none of my content in their cache.
Of course they might have site X in their index that links to something I have wrote. However, I don’t see why they should continue turning out my content in their search results.
Comment by Karl-Friedrich Lenz | May 15, 2005
I know you can be asked to be removed from Google index, and you will. However, that’s not really what you were trying to do. You’re trying to redirect Google hits to Yahoo or something anlong the lines. As a webmaster, my profession calls it shooting yourself in the foot.
Anyway, pick up the latest issue of 2600. There’s a great article on getting your site out of Google’s index. The article says it’s pretty easy to do. Google doesn’t want to index you if you don’t want to be indexed, but you do have to tell them what you want. I’m sure you could look on Google’s FAQ to find similar info.
Comment by Nicholas | May 15, 2005
Nothing is easily deleted from Google or Yahoo. Look for “NameBase” and the third link on each is to www.pir.org. I sold the pir.org domain 2.5 years ago to the Public Interest Registry. For four full months, they did a 301 redirect for all links to NameBase to the www.namebase.org domain, as specified in the contract. Over the next two years, on three different occasions, I spent about two days on each occasion tracking down webmasters who linked to NameBase to inform them of the domain change, and asking them to change their links. The success rate was less than 30 percent — probably because NameBase on pir.org went back to 1996.
It’s the links into the site that validate the site for Google and Yahoo. There’s nothing anyone can do to control that.
How many PhDs does it take to confirm that a link doesn’t go where it should be going? Many more than Yahoo or Google have.
Comment by Daniel Brandt | May 15, 2005
Nutcase #1, meet Nutcase #2. Look, this guy is so looney he’s stirred Nutcase #1 (Daniel Brandt) out of his shell to bitch about his site (not that it takes much). On the other hand, it’s nice to know Karl’s biggest worry is not oppression or starvation but rather a paranoid conspiracy theory. Karl, I see no evidence that what Google is doing is any different from existing proxy services out there. Further, the fact that they have recalled the service suggests they are having second thoughts, too.
You should be more worried about taps in transatlantic fiber than you should be of Google’s opt-in proxy service if data collection is your real concern. I hope you’re canceling your credit cards as well.
Considering what Google is offering is neither new (Earthlink, Squid, AOL,..) nor invasive (it’s data collection is well advertised) and entirely optional, your little protest is laughable.
Comment by Nick | May 15, 2005
@ Nicholas:
My point was exactly that I think I _can_ remove my content from the Google cache and search results, while the article above said:
“Google must keep links to him in the index with the proper PageRank, even if their crawlers cannot read it. Yet, every time Google lists these important pages”.
I don’t see why Google should list my pages any more once I have opted out.
@ Daniel Brandt: Yes, links to my site (like the one in the article above) won’t disappear. But that doesn’t mean that my pages won’t disappear in the search results.
Comment by Karl-Friedrich Lenz | May 15, 2005
Clearly, while Google Web Accelerator may benefit those who choose to use it, the information gleaned by Google could conceivably be used for evil purposes. Therefore, the technology should be outlawed! Just like BitTorrent.
–The MPAA
Comment by A. Nonymos Kauherd | May 15, 2005
Karl, Google manages to include pages in its index that it can’t even access. If I link to a page, Google adds that link to its index, even if it isn’t allowed to index that page, since the link says that it exists. This means that as long as Google is aware (thanks to a third party) that your site exists, it will index it.
Comment by Nathan Weinberg | May 15, 2005
@Nathan: Thanks. I did not know that. Now I understand what the article above meant with “every time Google lists these important pages”. They just list the URL, without having the contents in their cache.
Comment by Karl-Friedrich Lenz | May 16, 2005
As Google still delivers 48% of all search traffic, followed closely by Yahoo, and not so closely by MSN Search, I must say that for a business, trying to opt out of the Google index would be akin to telling half your customers to go Yahoo! themselves.
From a political perspective, it may be mildly interesting. From a reality perspective, I don’t see this sort of thing catching on anytime soon.
Comment by Eric Hamilton | May 23, 2005
Thanks for posting this - I completely agree with Dr. Lenz, and I’ve now added a link to his site from my Google ad boycott site.
Comment by James Moore | August 27, 2005
Google is a big Scammer in U.S. It’s ADWORD and ADSENSE programs require the participant to pay US$50 for exmaination fee and run the ADWORD with US1000 per month expenditure in order to qualify for passing the scam examination and get the phony professional certifcate.
Comment by fuck google | October 14, 2005
[…] Inside Google provides this report on a growing anti-Google campaign by Dr. Karl-Friedich Lenz, professor at Aoyaman Gakuin University in Tokyo:Citing major reservations about Google related to Autolink and Web Accelerator, Dr. Lenz recently posted a statement, that said in brief: Two months ago, I had Google as the homepage of my web browser. It would have been fair to describe me as a fan of their service. […]
Pingback by michaelzimmer.org » Blog Archive » Creating a Google-Free Zone | January 6, 2006
I noticed recently that I cannot change my home website to anybody from Google. I called them and there is no answer. I am sure Google did something to lock my IE home site to be Google. I cannot imagine a reputable company would do such unethical like a little theaf. I was able to remove google as the home webste by deleting everyting with “Google” in the registry. I sware I will never use Google again.
Comment by A. Chan | November 27, 2006
Mr. Chan, I’m sorry you had such problems - even though I’m not affiliated with Google in any way. Were you using the Google Toolbar? And what version of Internet Explorer were you using?
I doubt Google has locked your home page, but I do know Google has been doing some things to protect them from the Internet Explorer 7 search box.
Unfortunately, e-mailing Google is probably not going to do the trick. Perhaps someone can help you if you give us some more technical details about your configuration here.
Comment by Tim | November 27, 2006