Google starts censoring multiple search terms as of today

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Weren't sure where to find the best illegal files online and thought you'd turn to Google for help? It just got a wee bit harder. Google is living up to its promise to cut down on enabling piracy through its search engine by removing piracy-related terms from its autocomplete. Now, if you want to find certain sites related to file sharing, you'll have to know exactly what you're looking for if you want it to turn up on Google.

Google's autocomplete feature has become the stuff of legend, turning up strange observations about human nature and helping the world's Internet users get to their Web destinations that much faster. However, users began noticing that searches for BitTorrent, RapidShare, uTorrent, and the like aren't being autocompleted anymore—they'll only show up if you type the complete phrase into the search engine and hit enter.

The change doesn't come as a huge surprise—Google outlined its plan to "prevent terms that are closely associated with piracy from appearing in Autocomplete" in December as part of a new approach to digital copyright. In addition to the autocomplete changes, Google also said that it would work with rightsholders to "expel violators" from AdSense and "experiment to make authorized preview content more readily accessible in search results."

Still, Google's position is controversial, as some of the sites being censored also offer legitimate content, and plenty of other P2P sites (such as the Pirate Bay, Vuze, and MediaFire) are apparently not being censored. "What Google may not realize is that our technology is used for many purposes that provide significant value to the technology industry, companies, artists and consumers at large," BitTorrent VP of Marketing and Product Simon Morris told TorrentFreak.

Vodo founder Jamie King agreed, arguing that Google was willing to censor for China (until it wasn't), and now it's doing the same job for Big Content. "I guess it’s simple: our favorite search monopoly cares less about helping the thousands of independent creators who use BitTorrent to distribute legal, free-to-share content than they do about protecting the interests of Big Media in its death throes," King said.

For example, I type "bitorrent" and press "enter" and a piracy website is the first thing to come up.

How is a BitTorrent client a piracy website?

Oh no, now the pirates have to hit "Enter" every time they search for "torrent rapidshare warez downloads"! They'll be delayed by entire fractions of a second! The horror!

Darth Aspie, you are right it seems almost trivial what they are doing now. But since we do nothing now (because it is trivial) they will continue to show less and less and eventually stop. This is where google stops being a search engine and starts to become a massive advertisement corporation.
The block on bittorrent is ridiculous.

I think this was something the company did as a show of good faith to the broadcast and recording industries (and the broadcasters are also the ISPs now), whom they're going to have to play nice with if they ever want this IPTV thing to get off the ground.

If this is the case, it might be more productive to show that you're willing to pay for content offered in a fair manner, rather than use the "torrents by themselves aren't illegal" argument, which broadcasters are just plain sick of hearing. I agree that it's not the torrents to blame, and it's much more complicated than that, but it's tough making that argument since that's how the majority of piracy occurs.