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Why Did ProtonMail Vanish from Google Search Results? (2016)

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Re: Why Did ProtonMail Vanish from Google Search Results? (2016)

#151

Post by patrickg_zill »

fastball wrote: post #60
joosters wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So Google's recommended way of reporting a problem is to post on a forum that Google themselves don't officially read (or promise any kind of response)? Do you understand why some people might not think that's a satisfactory solution?

It's not like you have a right to appear in Google's search results... I'll rag on Google's poor support as much as the next guy, but only when it's warranted. ProtonMail and anyone else that gets delisted / what-have-you is not Google's client and shouldn't expect first-class support for things like this.

Google can have search one of two ways IMHO:

As visibly and rigorously impartial as possible, with little to no regulation (which means no SJW filtering and no ProtonMail filtering)

What they seem to be doing now, which will result in more pressure for regulation.

You don't have a right to appear in the results, but, people have a right to expect impartial standards are applied.

Re: Why Did ProtonMail Vanish from Google Search Results? (2016)

#152

Post by cpr »

mark_l_watson wrote: post #114

There are many major actors, both corporate and governmental, that don’t like privacy enhancing services like ProtonMail. No conspiracy theory, just large actors acting ruthlessly in their own self interest. This year old article is a bit bogus though. As other pointed out, the hit on SEO came from changing from .ch to .com ProtonMail, and other similar services, deserve to be supported in my opinion. I have recommen…

I think you could spell it out more clearly that the various three-letter agencies in the USA are quite interested in suppressing information about getting-popular systems that thwart their snooping.

Re: Why Did ProtonMail Vanish from Google Search Results? (2016)

#153

Post by dominotw »

StreamBright wrote: post #61
f_allwein wrote: post #7

[2016]. Having worked at Google’s Search Quality Evaluation team, I can confirm that Google would only manually remove sites from its search results if they violate its webmaster guidelines: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35769?hl=en Of course, there can be other issues preventing a site from showing up in the search results (e.g. site migration issues, accidentally locking out Googlebot in robots.txt,…

You mean violate the political stance of Google or any other arbitrary properties they got. You can go and compare search results across Duckduckgo, Bing and Google to get a full picture how much the search results are censored. When people talk about "net neutrality" I always wonder why isn't there outrage against this, because it is definitely not neutral. Same goes to many Google services, most notably Youtube. ht…

Usual response I get is that its easier to switch search engines so its not necessary[1]. Neutrality seems to be a function of availability of choice and ease of switching.

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15045653

Re: Why Did ProtonMail Vanish from Google Search Results? (2016)

#154

Post by [deleted] »

patrickg_zill wrote: post #151
fastball wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not like you have a right to appear in Google's search results... I'll rag on Google's poor support as much as the next guy, but only when it's warranted. ProtonMail and anyone else that gets delisted / what-have-you is not Google's client and shouldn't expect first-class support for things like this.

Google can have search one of two ways IMHO: As visibly and rigorously impartial as possible, with little to no regulation (which means no SJW filtering and no ProtonMail filtering) What they seem to be doing now, which will result in more pressure for regulation. You don't have a right to appear in the results, but, people have a right to expect impartial standards are applied.

[deleted]

Re: Why Did ProtonMail Vanish from Google Search Results? (2016)

#155

Post by saalweachter »

"Google's search results should contain exactly what I personally think they should in every case," said the HN commentator. "But they mustn't be personalized," said his boon companion. "Oh no, personalization is Evil." They nodded in agreement and upvoted each other's comments.

Re: Why Did ProtonMail Vanish from Google Search Results? (2016)

#156

Post by dreamcompiler »

Search is now as vital to the Internet as DNS. As such, having it be run by an unregulated, for-profit monopoly is looking less and less acceptable. As a minimum remedy, Google should probably establish a defined email address or web site where complaints like this are answered within 24 hours by a human. It's not like they can't afford it, and it might hold off full-on regulation of their activities a while longer.

Re: Why Did ProtonMail Vanish from Google Search Results? (2016)

#157

Post by Spivak »

ehllo wrote: post #148
fastball wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not like you have a right to appear in Google's search results... I'll rag on Google's poor support as much as the next guy, but only when it's warranted. ProtonMail and anyone else that gets delisted / what-have-you is not Google's client and shouldn't expect first-class support for things like this.

It is not about the right to appear in Google's search results. It is about abusing market dominance to put competing businesses at disadvantage. There are also other running/solved cases/investigations against Google. http://ec.europa.eu/competition/elojade/isef/case_details.cf... http://ec.europa.eu/competition/elojade/isef/index.cfm?fusea...

No it isn't. If you want to ensure that you're in the search results then you're supposed to buy an ad.

Edit: To everyone downvoting, can you explain why you expect to be provided guaranteed service from a business that you have no business relationship with?

Re: Why Did ProtonMail Vanish from Google Search Results? (2016)

#158

Post by zbentley »

ptero wrote: post #120
fastball wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what exactly is your solution? What law do you put in place, precisely? Google has to provide consumers with whatever information they want, whenever they want it, free of charge? Because that seems to be what you're gunning for.

I am pretty sure Google derives a lot of its revenue from advertisers who operate on the assumption that the users see Google searches as mostly efficient and impartial. There can be special cases, but they should not be statistically significant. Thus it is in Google's own interest to keep providing efficient, unbiased search or at least the appearance of it. Break this and the customers will flee to other search en…

I don't think advertisers care about the impartiality of the results, so long as their ads are getting eyeballs/clicks.

An advertiser might care if there were another, more impartial search engine that was drawing those eyeballs away, but that seems vanishingly unlikely given the current ubiquity of Google as a household name and company.

Sure, DuckDuckGo or whatever might draw some of the more tech-literate or paranoid crowd if Google started aggressively filtering results (which, for the record, I don't think they are doing or are likely to do), but why would advertisers care? Those people represent a tiny fraction of their eyeballs, perhaps so small as to be lost in statistical noise. Besides, many/most of the tech-literate folks use adblockers anyway, and the paranoids probably don't want to transmit their personal information online to buy things.

Re: Why Did ProtonMail Vanish from Google Search Results? (2016)

#159

Post by caio1982 »

rocqua wrote: post #43
caio1982 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for that! I really didn't know they had a response to these claims. However it's not hard to see this can just be a PR shield anyway.

For this not to be a PR shield (i.e. for Israel to really be able to read protonmail) the link would have to be an outright lie, or protonmail would have to have shared key data. Heck, even if somehow radware (the BGP-based DDoS proxy they use) had access to protonmails private key or had minted their own SSL cert for protonmail, you'd still be protected by PGP. For outgoing mail, they don't use radware so even if yo…

Where did you read I proposed any scheme at all, dude? Saying something looks like a PR shield is a problem now?

Re: Why Did ProtonMail Vanish from Google Search Results? (2016)

#160

Post by mintplant »

Relatedly, Google refuses to list my personal site (spinda.net) for reasons I can't discern. It only shows up if one searches for the exact domain itself, and even then as a bare entry with no description. I've tried submitting the URL through every avenue Google offers for recrawling—no dice.
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