{"id":50,"date":"2005-04-09T09:57:40","date_gmt":"2005-04-09T15:57:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ourada.org\/blog\/archives\/50"},"modified":"2005-04-09T09:57:40","modified_gmt":"2005-04-09T15:57:40","slug":"google-does-not-own-the-bleedin-web","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ourada.org\/blog\/archives\/50","title":{"rendered":"Google does not own the bleedin’ web!"},"content":{"rendered":"

A bit of a rant here…<\/p>\n

I have seen a number of instances around the web now of the reasoning “so-and-so published such-and-such on their web site, therefore, they’ve violated Google’s Terms of Service”. In one instance, a web host (one I don’t think is a subsidiary of Google) went as far as saying “so-and-so published such-and-such on their web site, therefore, they’ve violated Google’s Terms of Service, therefore they’ve violated our Terms of Service”.<\/p>\n

WHAT are you talking about?! As much as I dig Google and all their crazy services, they do not own the web.
\nFirstly, show me where in Google’s Terms of Service<\/a> there is any mention of what someone may or may not put in the content of their web site.
\nSecondly, by what legal binding mechanism has a random web publisher been bound to follow ANY of Google’s Terms of Service or other wishes? Publishing something on one’s own webspace and having Google crawl it, because they chose to, does not constitute a legal agreement.
\nThirdly, there is no thirdly. Though if there was, it would be something about how even if people are deliberately trying to manipulate Google or other search engines, they’re not committing any crime deeper than possibly being overzealous about their particular message.
\n(Fourthly is a great song by King Missile. It is also the point that why would an organization declare that “Google’s rules, whatever they may be and whether we understand them or not, are our rules”?)<\/p>\n

The point of my rant here is not that I think there’s any legal meaning to these weird articulations people make, but that the thinking behind them indicates a sort of insidious self-delusion about power relationships that eventually petrifies itself into actual existence. And given that I own your mind (check my Terms of Service), I order you to not be prey to such delusions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A bit of a rant here… I have seen a number of instances around the web now of the reasoning “so-and-so published such-and-such on their web site, therefore, they’ve violated Google’s Terms of Service”. In one instance, a web host (one I don’t think is a subsidiary of Google) went as far as saying “so-and-so […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-50","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","author-admin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ourada.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ourada.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ourada.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourada.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourada.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourada.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ourada.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourada.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourada.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}