Google’s autocomplete blacklist has for some time stopped when terms like “torrent” or “rapidshare” were entered. Now a large number of popular torrent sharing sites have joined the blacklist as well.
Try searching for, say “thepiratebay” “isohunt” or “torrentreactor” and you’ll now find that Google won’t autocomplete the entry for you. It’s still possible to force the search by hitting return, but lower the odds that you might find a new torrent site by searching for it, as Google will no longer suggest it.
Update: Although as pointed out, it’s not consistent; it was definitely blocking within Australia last night, but isn’t doing so now.
What’s been seen in the past with searches that Google’s culled from its results is that the use of those terms drops sharply; in essence you’ve got to know that it’s there to find it. What do you reckon — is Google doing what it can to fight piracy, or engaging in rather subtle censorship? [Torrentfreak]
Image: Uncle Catherine
Alex
Friday, November 25, 2011 at 10:04 AMgoogle should be search provider … as far as I know torrent is still legal in most countries
so I want to use search provider to find legal content on the web…
DarkAura
Friday, November 25, 2011 at 10:21 AMHey Alex,
I use many torrent search sites for alot of reasons. I sometimes use google to find the torrentz I need but in this case I understand google’s move.
Sites like “thepiratebay” “isohunt” or “torrentreactor” are clearly focused around non legal content, Just go do a search but I’m sure you know that already. This doesn’t even begin with the harmful crap you can download from these sites when uses don’t know what your doing.
Instead perhaps google should be putting up warnings on these sites that they might be malware / harmful but then again that would annoy me more.
Alex
Friday, November 25, 2011 at 11:03 AMDarkAura
its still just an opinion…
Child porn is illigal and it is band
torrents are still legal and yet they are getting band
I actually never used google for torrent searches but its a beginning of something that I dont really like
Nathan
Friday, November 25, 2011 at 11:21 AMI refuse to watch a music act that supports child porn. Plain and simple.
Drongo
Friday, November 25, 2011 at 11:47 AMyeah plane and simpal
Bdc
Friday, November 25, 2011 at 11:34 AMUsing the word band when you mean banned is the continuation of something I like even less.
Alex
Friday, November 25, 2011 at 11:50 AM/face palm
buy a dictonary
Friday, November 25, 2011 at 12:37 PMDon’t you mean “Phaise Parm”
Michael
Friday, November 25, 2011 at 12:51 PMWhich band? Are they touring?
miguel sanchez
Friday, November 25, 2011 at 2:40 PMTheir touring now?!?! When are the tickets going on sail?
FSM
Friday, November 25, 2011 at 6:26 PMThe tickets are sailing away as we speak…
Richard
Friday, November 25, 2011 at 5:29 PMIf you want to use torrents for legal activities then you probably don’t need Google’s auto complete anyway, chances are you know exactly where and how to get what you need because theres no need for any site to hide the content. I imagine you wouldn’t even need the phase “torrent” in the search phase to get to a download link pretty quick.
Also, on the raising of things like Child Porn etc, I think you do a disservice to your argument by comparing these sorts of things. Firstly Google’s service does not need to be a 1:1 reflection of any laws just as any family has the right to say they don’t want pornography in a household that may exist in a state where it is legal. Secondly, things that are legal or illegal here won’t be elsewhere and I would not be surprised if somewhere there are places where something like Child porn is not in fact illegal. If so, do we use your arguement to say Google should allow it?
It’s a bit of a slippery slope if you start using governmental laws as a means to say a company should back X, Y or Z. Particularly web based ones (even if they are situated in specific countries like the US)
M0les
Friday, November 25, 2011 at 10:10 AMGoogle certainly have the right to do this – they can withold all search results if they wish. It only does harm to their business and brand if they do though.
Personally I believe they should not do it for their own sake.
wsDK_II
Friday, November 25, 2011 at 10:14 AMWork in AU, maybe this is an american thing?
Alex Kidman
Friday, November 25, 2011 at 10:18 AMOdd; I’d checked this last night and autocomplete wasn’t working for those terms, but you’re right — it certainly appears to be now. I’ll amend the story appropriately.
wsDK_II
Friday, November 25, 2011 at 11:03 AMStill, at the end of the day this will not do anything to curb piracy
Sam
Friday, November 25, 2011 at 12:47 PMWill it do anything to curb it? No – but it will give the immediate impression that they don’t actively condone it. I mean if you have to type out “grandma gutter sluts 13 Torrent” in full, you’re less likely to accidentally stumble on in than if you were just typing “grandma”…
smurfydog
Friday, November 25, 2011 at 7:12 PMWait. 13s out already?
Damn – I haven’t even seen 12 yet!
BenDTU
Friday, November 25, 2011 at 10:38 AMMine autocorrects to ThePirateBay.org/music. That’s the legal part of their site, right?
Sam
Friday, November 25, 2011 at 10:40 AMUltimately, what google decides to do with it’s own service is up to them. It was their straight-forward approach which attracted the userbase and won them the “search wars” against Yahoo and co. before, so ultimately if consumers don’t like it, there are other alternatives they can use.
Theres nothing to suggest (yet) that other than disabling auto complete for these sites, that they’ve removed any other functionality.
Oh, and if you’re searching for torrents on Google, then you’re doing it wrong in the first place ;)
BenDTU
Friday, November 25, 2011 at 10:51 AMBut the alternatives all suck :|
jack
Friday, November 25, 2011 at 11:28 AMever tried torrentz? indexes all the popular torrent sites. Despite the fact I only trust thepiratebay results anyway.
And honestly, 90%+ of all torrent files on the public sites are replicated across the trackers, so you really only need to know one site.
Sam
Friday, November 25, 2011 at 12:43 PM…who said anything about public trackers?
Baa
Friday, November 25, 2011 at 10:54 AMMeh, I never search for torrents through google… I just go straight to my normal site and search there!
MrTaco
Friday, November 25, 2011 at 11:18 AM“Google won’t autocomplete the entry for you. It’s still possible to force the search by hitting return”
Gasp? :P
I have autocomplete disabled anyway. Hate it.
cayal
Friday, November 25, 2011 at 1:05 PMI love autocomplete. Some of the finishing sentences are classics.
Space2099
Friday, November 25, 2011 at 11:27 AMI just did a search for PIRATE and the top autocomplete was PIRATE BAY, for ISO with a space after it the top auto complete was ISO HUNT and TORRENT REAC brings up TORENT REACTOR.NET. Also if you do a search for TORRET the top autocomplete is TORRENTZ.COM, do a search for that and the top result is TORRENTZ.EU, which has links to multiple bittorrent sites. Well, so much for that.
Damo
Friday, November 25, 2011 at 12:48 PMPerhaps google is getting concerned about copyright breaches for the sake of selling music and movies themselves
Adam
Friday, November 25, 2011 at 12:50 PMI would be very interested to see a report detailing the percentage of legitimate vs illigitimate use of torrents, and torrent sharing websites.
Regarding Google’s decision, I believe it is a smart move to distance themselves from piracy supporting websites.
smurfydog
Friday, November 25, 2011 at 7:35 PMDo you really need to see a report to know that legitimate uses would be a fraction of 1% ?
light487
Friday, November 25, 2011 at 12:54 PMWhat’s the point of them blocking autocorrect when the 3rd or 4th result of most movie searches ends up being piratebay or some other piracy site.. just silly.
Jack
Friday, November 25, 2011 at 1:41 PMIt suggested “thepiratebay.org/music”
After typing :thepir”
Steve
Friday, November 25, 2011 at 4:39 PMPretty useless. Most people I know just straight up hit the Pirate Bay URL rather than Googling it. That, and Chrome has a pirate bay search add-on, which puts a little search icon in your taskbar without having to go through either of the above methods.
Namarrgon
Friday, November 25, 2011 at 6:13 PM“autocomplete blacklist” != “search blacklist” #titlefix
Why is anyone caring? It’s only autocomplete. You can still search for all these terms, and the results are not censored in any way.
Google is simply heading off accusations that they’re actively suggesting piracy to people.
Space2099
Friday, November 25, 2011 at 6:56 PMHow about search Google alternative.
WHO
Saturday, November 26, 2011 at 2:04 PMumm i can still go to Google and type in pirate and the first recommendation is pirate bay
DarthDVD
Saturday, November 26, 2011 at 5:17 PMBlizzard Use the Bit torrent Protocall to update starcraft2 and many of their other games…. thats a legal torrent…. but i spose you dont need google to get that.