Back in December Google announced it would blacklisting piracy related sites from it’s Auto-complete and Instant Search results feature and Wednesday it has finally taken effect.
If you enter a site that has been blacklisted you will still be able to search for the site but Google will no longer give you recommendations as you type. The only problem I see with this is what is the use? If a user is still able to search for the blacklisted words it really defeats the purpose of blacklisted.
Personally I have Auto-complete and Instant Search turned off already so if I typed in a blacklisted word I wouldn’t get recommendations anyways. What needs to be done is block these sites all together, and before I hear groans, what I mean is if Google is so intent on adding features such as Instant Search, why not put together an Instant-Block feature and give users the ability to block these results themselves.
One problem I have already seen is Google’s selection seems to be more of a lets block this site but even thought this site is doing the same thing lets not block them. An example of this is sites such as Rapidshare and Megupload have been blocked but sites such as Hotfile and Fileserve are not. All four serve the exact same purpose and that is File Storage and all four host illegal downloads for users to access. I don’t know how their selection process is done but it seems that someone needs to sit down and rethink their process of selection.
Though there is no official announcement or publicly made list of the newly blacklisted words here are a few I rounded up:
Bit Torrent. Utorrent, Rapidshare, Megaupload and Torrent!
I agree that it’s a step in the right direction but there is still al ot of work that needs to be done. While I don’t agree all the blacklisted sites are evil, they do pose a problem because they are the sites being used to spread the illegal software, movies, games, etc…. to the world.
