Review on "After Google-Verizon fizzle, FCC should force Net neutrality" (Boston Globe editorial, 8/17/10)

If only certain websites were available, or more quickly available to anyone with an Internet connection, what would happen to the world? Well, a lot of points of view wouldn't be heard. The concept of net neutrality would help all websites be able to gain equal traffic.

This Google and Verizon story is very fishy with all of its loopholes. When you say there should be a difference between wireless and wired broadband, it's creating a huge problem. I have no idea how many people have wired vs. wireless Internet, but I feel like a majority of us often connect to wireless Internet more often than wired, in the age of "Free Wi-Fi" and smart phones.

What Verizon proposed to do definitely inhibits a lot of Internet access in terms of video streaming websites. Without the FCC's help in regulating net neutrality, it would leave "American Internet users without a federal agency keeping their service providers honest."

Blog Update...

So if you're a regular reader of my blog, you may have noticed it looks a bit different. Starting today, this blog was approved for Google AdSense. Leading up to the days of my independent media class project, I'm doing a little experiment to see how much Google AdSense really contributes to a blog or blogger's income.

So what did I have to do to get Google AdSense? Easy if you have a blogger/gmail account. All you do on Blogger is go to your dashboard, click earnings and connect Google AdSense. You click which Google account you want to select (if you have more than one), as well as which blog URL you want the ads to appear on. Once you've been approved, you'll get an email and you can choose if you want ads to appear in your sidebar, below posts or both. Right now, it's both. The ads seems slightly relevant to my blog; I keep seeing ads for Columbia Journalism School, so we're on the right track.

Another thing to note, if you track your page views and where they come from, it really is interesting to note everyday and then track how much you're making on AdSense. If I had been approved yesterday, when for some reason I got 97 page views in a few hours from Malaysia, I would be making a lot of money already...maybe.

If you think the ads are distracting, want to know more, etc, feel free to comment below! I'll be posting updates on how this is working in the upcoming weeks.

Review on "Google bows to China's censorship demands" (The Sydney Morning Herald, 7/21/10)

What's the use of Google in China if users can't search and find everything they ought to be able to see?  Well, I'm not sure of what other search engines are available in China, and if they are as good as Google, so that's somewhere to start. 

When Google was banned in China for directing them to a mainland site in Hong Kong that was unfiltered, they only came back four months later, agreeing to all of China's demands. Google had promised to abide by the Chinese government, as well as "avoid linking to material deemed a threat to national security or social stability."

As I suspected, Google doesn't make nearly as much money in China as it does in other countries. The Chinese market accounts for "an estimated $US250 million to $US600 million of Google's projected $US28 billion in revenue this year." However, it is feasible that without "the China platform," Google would not be able "to profit from the expected future growth of the market." 

Review on Jane Macartney's "Dissident Chinese professor to sue Yahoo! and Google for erasing his name" (London Times, 2/6/08)

It's not really a surprise that certain things won't appears in search results on the Internet in China. However, it is surprising that it was the United States that blocked Guo Quan's name from Yahoo! and Google in China.

However, Google and Yahoo! aren't just doing this for no reason. Google stated that they were in compliance with Chinese law. And since Google or Yahoo! don't have a legal identity in China, Quan went to sue the "parent company" in the United States. Makes sense.

Either way, Quan is going against the Chinese government and does not seem to stand a chance in the near future, and I'm not sure what happened since this article.

Quan states one thing as his mission: “Through this I hope that the world will become more concerned to resolve human rights issues in China. The freedom of the internet should be realised all over the world.”

While the freedom of the Internet worldwide may never happen, human rights issues in China is a good place for Quan to start. 

Review on Michael Park's "Journalist Who Exposes U.N. Corruption Disappears From Google" (Fox News, 2/18/08)

"I think they said, 'If we can't get this guy out of the U.N., let's disappear him from the Internet,'" Lee said.

That's a good way of putting it. Matthew Lee's articles from his news blog Inner City Press, were banned from Google News after he suspects someone from the United Nations Development Programme spoke to Google about him. Lee's letter from Google News said they could no longer include his blog in their listing as it would not ensure a high quality experience for their users. 

Lee's blog became an outlet for whistleblowers inside the U.N., and on multiple occasions, exposed abuses and lack of concern for global issues like poverty. 

While Lee may or may not have violated Google News's terms for what constitutes a true news organization (i.e. having more than one employee), that doesn't discredit all of his reporting. While his website appears on Google News today, it is concerning that it took "several weeks" for Google to resolve the issue and that the U.N. may or may not have gone to many lengths to cover him up.