Google’s now Evil? Is WordPress next?
Rolling Stones magazine has a great article this week on what appears to be a pretty crappy decision by Google to pull content down from Blogger websites without warning the content owners.
For those of you who don’t know, Blogger and WordPress are pretty similar systems for putting up blogs with the exception that WordPress can be downloaded and run on hosted machines. That means that all the content you post to your Blogger blog is hosted on Google, which is great but if you take a look at the fine print of your EULA it also means that Google has all sorts of rights when it comes to your content and one of those rights is to simply take down content that it deems isn’t appropriate.
So what does Google find inappropriate? Well by the looks of things, an awful lot of music websites and even music review websites. Some are asking if Google has hopped into bed with the devil RIAA, or is this something else? It’s ironic that Google, who owns the largest source of copyright infringement on the Internet today would be pulling down websites featuring music content but that’s exactly what appears to be happening all over the hosted blog tool Blogger.
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What can musicians do about this? Not much really, Google has the right to do it and as long as your website is hosted on Blogger, you’re subject to the terms that you signed up for. If you’d like to switch your blog over blogger to WordPress there are two ways you can do it. You can either host a new WordPress blog at wordpress.com and run the risk of them doing the same thing to you, or you can setup a WordPress website on your own server and moderate the content yourself.
Before wordpress.com site owners get too smug and assume the same can’t happen to you, take a look at this latest post from Lorelle:
As announced, Matt Mullenweg has added a script to WordPress.com that forces all the variations of WordPress to the proper spelling with a capital P in the “Press” part of the name.
Now I’ve tested this on a few blogs that I run across wordpress.com and it doesn’t appear to be in place yet but it appears this plan won’t be optional which means that if you have a website at wordpress.com you won’t have a choice, the moment you publish a blog using phrases like word press or wordpress, it will automatically be published as WordPress. No news yet on what happens if you write a blog about sword pressure.
Is it really such a bad thing to standardize on the name? As Michael points out at WP Engineer, it is a trademark and it should always be presented correctly but should Matt and the boys at wordpress.com be editing your content without first seeking your permission? Frankly, I think that an omnipotent overlord editing content arbitrarily will be annoying to many in the WordPress community long before an insignificant branding boo boo.
Imaging for a moment what would happen if your Gmail account was being edited by Google to capitalize their brands? If gmail became Gmail as soon as you pressed send or if Microsoft began editing your Word documents after you’d gone to bed to ensure you’d placed the right ™ and ® symbols on their names … I’d be pissed.
wordpress.com’s decision to forcibly change the content of millions of blogs without seeking the permission of website owners represents a slippery slope in the use of technology and begs the question, if they feel they can minor changes without seeking our permission what stops them from making major changes to our content without seeking our approval?
Wow, a slippery slope with WordPress. Interesting exaggeration and grasping to make a point. Unfortunately, the guy behind giving people a voice around the world, in spite of their governments, religions, and other controllers shutting them down and even killing them, isn’t controlling anyone’s content just his trademark name. For many in the WordPress Community, seeing it misspelled is annoying, but also often a sign of a lack of attention to detail. Many are cheering as they have long had WordPress Plugins installed on their full version sites (which can do whatever they want include running porn, spam, scam, and whatever without WordPress interfering, speaking of freedoms) to fix the spelling if they forget.
As for those who violate Terms of Service agreements and get punished, if you don’t read the fine print and you take advantage of free, then you have to pay the price when the piper comes to call. Free often comes with strings, no matter what it is.
I’m not in favor of shutting down sites without warning, but reports are not always based upon facts.
@Lorelle, I don’t think it’s an exaggeration at all. I’m sure he’s a nice guy and I agree with you that he’s helped millions around the world publish blogs but he’s also now edited all those blogs to reflect his own perspective, regardless of their motivation or personal reasons for not conforming to his corporate branding.
I have a hard time imagining that it would ever be acceptable for a company like Apple or Microsoft to force users to spell their names the way their marketing departments wanted us to and as I say in the post, Google would be foolish to alter email to ensure GMail was spelt Gmail, so does Matt really have the right to do it to millions of blogs without consulting the users?
Of course he does, which is the most alarming part.
Of course he does..it’s his trademark, and last time I checked the users had FREE sites on HIS server (so to speak)….
Your site is on WordPress.com…and I don’t see the capitalization being corrected on your site…only sites on WordPress.com
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EDIT: Your site is NOT on WordPress.com
@Shayne, you’re absolutely right. I’m not disagreeing with you, both blogging services have the right to alter content or delete it as company policy dictates.
This is one more reason to not use a subdomain of Blogger or WordPress for a personal or business blog. A person devotes months, or perhaps years to a blog that’s not their own only to fall victim to an administrator’s whims!
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Google’s “Don’t Be Evil” motto, first uttered by Googler Paul Buchheit in 2001, has long been the pillar of their self-imposed code of conduct. It was amended somewhat in 2006 when CEO Eric Schmidt, under fire for entering the Chinese market with censorship restrictions, said “We actually did an evil scale and decided not to serve at all was worse evil.” He turned it into a sort of evil minimization algorithm.
Google and evil thats a phrase I have only heard…3 or 4 times this week; especially with their latest GPS on google map update :p
In regards to wordpress (it probably does) and google actually pulling blogs, I think bottom line is they are a business and they have to protect their interests and their legal ‘asses’.
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@Joe, that’s often overlooked or forgotten. Most major blogging platforms TOS’s state they own the content you provide. @Donace, I have no issue with companies pulling content it believe violates copyrights or breaches the TOS’s but I do take offense to companies altering legitimate content without notifying the users.
The scenario that you paint is indeed very scary. I suppose that the best way to get around it is to host your blog on an independent site even if you use a WP theme.
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@Nicole, that’s a very interesting comment. It didn’t occur to me that many people might be unaware of the fact that you can host your wordpress website on a regular web host and avoid something like this all together. I host my WP blog on BlueHost, it’s about $70 a year.
I am self like blogger and wordpress both with their unique features , but as a wise setup its better to host these services on your own domain rather to be a part of these monoplies.
I’m with you on this one Christopher. As far as google is concerned, free speech reigns so long as it does not conflict with his profits or sensibilities, which is fine as it’s his platform but why would you want to put a stranglehold on your creativity? Same applies to Wordpress. I’ve have made use of the blogger platform but all my serious stuff I host myself.
I did a bit of a satirical post on google being a tyrant, perhaps it was closer to the truth than I realized.
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Even if you host your WordPress blog on your own server what’s to stop them from putting in some code on the next update, that forces the text the way they require it. I don’t think there is any harm in what they have done but its what it can lead to in the future that’s the worrying thing.
@Sire, I can understand companies editing the content on their websites when they feel it may violate a copyright (I do that here), as @Khaled points out however the slippery slope isn’t so much what they do to hosted websites (the people agree to the TOS on the site) it’s the idea that they could choose to do this to all websites running the WP platform without consulting anybody.
That goes without saying but the time may come when they do something more untoward, such as editing or deleting content because they do not agree with a political view or something. I’ve seen this happen on some community sites.
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Great post Chris. These companies are provide a valuable free tool. but at what cost to the user. It’s a shame you can have hundreds if not thousands of pages of content erased because of someone elses bottom line.
That is one of the biggest pitfalls of using free blog platforms, happens all the time, in essence you are a renter remodeling someone’s else’s house and they can evict you any time!
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@ JR – Now there is an analogy that I haven’t heard of before. A blogger on a free site is virtually decorating someone elses site who could turf them out without a moments notice. I think I will stick to hosting my own blogs.
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@JR & @Sire – Stephen Spencer made a comment similar in one of his videos, pointing out that building brand awareness for a domain was best accomplished at your own web domain instead of on a service like WordPress.
Both Blogger and WordPress are valuable tools but before you commit to building an active following on the platforms, consider the Terms of Service.
Unfortunately Chris, I believe most people would go in blindly and have not read the TOS.
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[...] admin tool (which is cool to see) and it’s also nice to see that Matt’s decided not ¬†to force self hosted blogs to write WordPress correctly [...]
I didn’t realize Wordpress had that level of control over your personal or professional blog, kind of scary.
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@ Sire
For sure!
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I really liked your blog! You have some great content. Check out my blog and give me some feedback… I just posted a great blog about the 36 Best Wordpress plugins for 2009., thanks !
A good reason to have your own domain and develop your own blog.
Google also announced the “death” of google notebook, something I rely on a lot. The bottom line, is that if it is FREE they run the show. Heck, even it it ain’t free they still run the show.
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