I'm kinda off-put about their decision to censor the software program titles, rather then say copyrighted illegal content. Obviously the former is the "easy" fix, while they should have approached the latter solution instead. And while this is only a censor on the autocomplete and instant search (neither of which I actively use) it does pave the way for eventual search result censoring.
Then again this could be a good thing for competitors. I can see a market open for a "censor free" search engine. Tagline "You're an adult, search like one". Hey... any entrepreneurs feel up for a new startup? wink wink nudge nudge
> I'm kinda off-put about their decision to censor the software program titles, rather then say copyrighted illegal content.
Pardon, but are you really serious? Disregarding the obvious senselessness of the term "copyrighted illegal content", people search for book titles all the time. People search for software all the time. Half the stuff people search the Internet for is copyrighted or trademarked. The only reasonable way to stop suggesting torrents is to block on the names of torrent software.
I misread your comment the first time through, but the misreading gave me a profound idea... "Why doesn't Google black-list the names of the copyrighted works?"
Yes, of course. But it's mostly a rhetorical question. You see, the new auto-complete filters are banning the terms of legitimate services (albeit theses services can be misused) in conjunction with terms of copyrighted works (e.g. <photoshop rapidshare> or <rapidshare photoshop>).
It's the combination of terms, so if one should be banned to please copyright holders, it almost makes sense to ban the terms of copyrighted works. After all, it's the copyright holders pushing for this kind of filtering.
Then again this could be a good thing for competitors. I can see a market open for a "censor free" search engine. Tagline "You're an adult, search like one". Hey... any entrepreneurs feel up for a new startup? wink wink nudge nudge