Why Google And Facebook Need To Go Dark To Protest SOPA

This strikes me as a far more important consideration than the loss of revenue or potential harm being discussed in the other topics.

Blacking out Google's front page will reach 38 Million (or 12% of the population) [1]. Compare that to the effort involved in more traditional political advertising--The largest TV audience is around 27 Million [2] (And drops by 50% to the most popular non-football program). There's also the question of how invasive the ads are. I'd bet a notice on the Google homepage getting in your way every time you do a search will have far more impact than newspaper ad that you skip over once you realize it isn't an article.

We know there's a level of discomfort concerning business's influence on politics. There was fallout over the supreme court decision in Citizens United v. FEC--the issue is being brought up again [3].

Google has a lot of power over the internet and a lot of knowledge of what people do on-line. Most of us can overlook that since we don't see a personal impact (except every few months a site vanishes from Google's results and the owner's blog post shows up on HN). Though they are getting attention from congressional inquiries and lawyers seeking to kill opposing sites.

Consider the fallout if Google went ahead. You have people uneasy with how businesses can effect politics from just the abstract idea of donations being shown a very concrete example. You have politicians with the power to regulate Google being shown that Google can be a danger to them.

I don't see how they could risk losing their perceived neutrality and harmlessness.

[1] Using the statistics from http://google.com.hypestat.com/ for a rough estimate: 129M unique visitors daily, 30% from the United States, that's 38.7M or 12% of the population.

[2] http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/top10s/television.html

[3] http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405297020436810457713...

The last thing Google will tell you is that they are critical infrastructure. They would never want that much liability or responsibility to be placed on them. Searching for information about a medical condition is something I think a lot of people do, but they shouldn't come to rely on Google (or the Web in general) for that.

The information Google returns can be false, misleading, under-researched, or all of the above. You can't actually rely on the information you find. Even something as simple as 'what to do in the event of receiving a concussion' can be riddled with misinformation. Practicing Web-medicine is illadvised.

I'm not sure if you're suggesting that it was you or I who is guilty of mental laziness but the entire world laughed as we called our banks "too big to fail" and you're regurgitating the exact same mantra. The only difference is you've switched Goldman Sachs with Google.

I posted this elsewhere, but I think it got buried. IMO it is worth reposting here:

Assuming this spreads, I believe a potential ramification of major sites blacking out would be new laws that would attempt to make such black outs illegal.

It could be seen as equivalent to strikes in essential service industries like transportation. Such strikes are semi-regulated and governments can and have ordered strikers back on the job to maintain public order. I see this possibility as a potentially major unintended consequence of putting Facebook "on strike".

I believe Facebook is the least one willing to stand up for civil rights - as long as not about some 3rd world dictatorship. With their ongoing questionable practice in regards to privacy they are certainly going to duck and cover as soon as something controversial comes up. Google and especially Twitter are from my view substantially more supportive to causes like these.