Google, politics and censorship

So I’m at my mum’s trying to make some progress on writing my thesis, and she complained about one of the sites she likes to visit – UrukNet – being shunned from Google News.

I asked her for some links regarding this, and apparently there are a number of curious issues surrounding Google and controversal (leftish) websites.
I’m not sure what to think, but I am certainly not surprised…

The UrukNet issue is at least three months old but no less relevant. Apparently, the site has dropped off the Google News pages at least three times. Supposedly, countless emails and incessant nagging returned them back in the news lists.

Google has also had some issues with controversial videos. The Terror Storm film by Alex Jones mysteriously had its viewer count reset twice, thereby removing it from Google’s video top 100. Furthermore, This video, showing some (dubious) allegations regarding the WTC attacks, had been removed from Google Video, possibly due to its controversial content. A story regarding Charlie Sheen commenting on the 9/11 events also temporarily didn’t return results on Google, as opposed to other search engines such as Yahoo which did responded to the query. Two videos by dissident historian Michael A. Hoffman II have also been removed under suspicious circumstances. Lastly, this story suggests that Google is helping out in a fundraiser for a few Republicans.

Granted, most of the links above concern leftist ‘fringe’ websites and endeavours, which may be more sensitive and wary about the movements and doings of corporate monoliths, but all in all Google’s supposed objectivity does seem to become questionable.