Free Republic

Jim Robinson has created and maintains a huge treasure trove of news and information here at FreeRepublic.com. He gladly shares it with us Freepers and the rest of the world (a.k.a. - lurkers). And thanks to Jim and staff, FreeRepublic has a fantastic search engine (far surpassing Google), IMHO, due to the plethora of relevant news and information from around the world posted by us Freepers. For lack of a better description, I would classify FreeRepublic as a huge historical news and information database thanks to all of the postings and comments of Freepers (and a few disrupters - ZOT!!)....

This is a question to all you freepers (the last 2-4) years I have really notices that there is ~NOT~ balance in the search results I have recieved from googe + yahoo. In fact if you look for alternate search engines from those websites they don't lead you anywhere either.. I am SO Sick of the liberal bias- I never used to get unbalanced results from these website engines. Please IF anyone knows about any good alternate search engines: Please tell me!! I am trapped..!

Standing between a marriage of Microsoft and Yahoo may be the technology behemoth that has continually outsmarted them: Google. In an unusually aggressive effort to prevent Microsoft from moving forward with its $44.6 billion hostile bid for Yahoo, Google emerged over the weekend with plans to play the role of spoiler. Publicly, Google came out against the deal, contending in a statement that the pairing, proposed by Microsoft on Friday in the form of a hostile offer, would pose potential threats to competition that needed to be examined by policy makers around the world, a threat Microsoft disputed. Privately, Google...

Last year’s scamnesty bill had widespread support among the powers-that-be, with the president, the Democrat majority and mainstream media all singing its praises. Yet it went down to defeat, slain by a new-media coalition of talk radio and blogosphere warriors. Working tirelessly to expose the truth and rally the grassroots, they became a David who slew a Goliath. Forty-three years ago it was a different world. Ted Kennedy had co-authored the “Immigration Reform Act of 1965,” which created a situation wherein 85 percent of our immigrants hail from the Third World and Asia. He took to the Senate floor, claimed...

A letter from the top two ranking members of the Senate Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy, and Consumer Rights, Democrat Herb Kohl and Republican Orrin Hatch, seeks to chill Google's proposed acquisition of DoubleClick on antitrust grounds: Antitrust regulators need to be wary to guard against the creation of a powerful Internet conglomerate able to extend its market power in one market into adjacent markets, to the detriment of competition and consumers. This might not have seemed like much of a threat, even a year or two ago, but as the online world increasingly merges with the offline world, the...

There is no better illustration of Google's corporate immorality and avarice for personal, private information than Chief Executive Officer Eric Schmidt's latest announcement about where he wants to take the company. He told journalists in London the company's goal is to maximize the personal information it holds on you. "The goal is to enable Google users to be able to ask the question such as 'What shall I do tomorrow?' and 'What job shall I take?'" I don't know about you, but I don't want any private or public entity to have that kind of private, personal information about me....

Another new search engine, which offers local search service, will soon boost to the Internet market industry. AOL LLC had started to test it new local search service engine, which finally adds up to the many competitors in the Internet industry for years. According to AOL LLC if the internet users are interested and curious on giving a service test drive all they have to do is try to look at the main page of the AOL’s main portal page and there they will find a local tab in the search box. Then just click that on, and that tab...

Major studios charge Google suggested keywords such as 'bootleg movie download,' and 'pirated.' Search engine execs pledge reform. Internet search leader Google is facing criticism from major media companies for reportedly working closely to help two Web sites accused of film pirating. The Wall Street Journal reported that Brandon Drury and Luke Sample, who are accused of promoting film piracy in a suit brought by major film studios, got significant support from Google between 2003 and 2005. The two men had Web sites - EasyDownloadCenter.com and TheDownloadPlace.com - which the paper said enabled users to search for movies on the...

Google's decision to censor its search engine in China was bad for the company, its founders admitted yesterday. Google, launched in 1998 by two Stanford University dropouts, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, was accused of selling out and reneging on its "Don't be evil" motto when it launched in China in 2005. The company modified the version of its search engine in China to exclude controversial topics such as the Tiananmen Square massacre or the Falun Gong movement, provoking a backlash in its core western markets. Asked whether he regretted the decision, Mr Brin admitted yesterday: "On a business level,...

How Does ProLifeSearch.com Support Life?http://www.prolifesearch.com/pages/how-our-search-works ProLifeSearch.com is the "Web's First Pro-Life Search Engine." Search the Web just like you would with any major search engine. We donate revenues to Pro-Life charities. These revenues come from our own ads that we run on our home page and from the sale of products. To make sure this is crystal clear: We DO NOT generate revenue for donations from "Pay-Per-Click" ads (e.g., "Ads by Google," etc.) Therefore there is no financial incentive to click on any ads. Please visit our sponsors if what they offer truly appeals to you. Here's how it works....

I was fortunate enough to be the first journalist to get an in-depth demonstration of Powerset, which is a natural-language search engine. Simply put, the technology analyzes the meaning and relationships of words in context so that it can accommodate questions asked in natural language, such as "How're the Giants doing," rather than questions asked in sketchy "keywordese" inputs, like "scores, Giants." ... Since Powerset indexes a fraction of a fraction of what Google currently handles, we confined our test of Powerset to searching the The New York Times and Wikipedia sites and then checked how Google stacked up when...

Search Engines Burrow Deep Into Private Lives A is keeping tabs on his ex-girlfriend. But the employee with a large conglomerate has not seen her since they broke up, nor spoken to her on the phone, and his information does not come via an indiscreet mutual friend. "She had a child not too long ago,” A says. “And these days she's out buying diapers all the time." He knows this not because he hired a private eye to dog her steps. "My ex has the same e-mail address as before,” he reveals: and that is how he knows these...

Here's a paragraph from a longer Washington Prowler feature of The American Spectator: "What makes Weber's cynical support of the legislation even worse, say Republican Hill staffers, is that his activities also aid MoveOn.org, the extremist, left-wing organization, which is now being financially backed by Google so that MoveOn can help Google with "Net Neutrality." Google has become the single largest private corporate underwriter of MoveOn. According to sources in the Democrat National Committee, MoveOn has received more than $1 million from Google and its lobbyists in Washington to create grassroots support for the Internet regulation legislation. Some of that...

Google is currently the premier search engine. However, it's results are getting worse by the day. Besides being bombarded with gateway search engine pages no matter what term you type in, you are not getting relevant results. In other words, you are not seeing legitimate pages that other search engines like Yahoo will return. For proof of this I give you the term "privacy service". This one affects us and our service at www.cotse.net. Cotse.Net is a privacy service. According to our logs it is indexed daily by Google. According to Google, we are not penalized in any way by...

Saturday April 29, 1:37 AM Google Fails to Make Inroads in S. Korea Google Inc. has seeped into many aspects of online life across the globe, but the Internet search engine has failed so far to make any notable inroads in one of the world's most-wired countries: South Korea. Users here are some of the most Internet-savvy in the world, with millions of people running their own blogs and taking advantage of omnipresent broadband hookups and Wi-Fi hotspots. South Koreans would seem like natural Google users, but the leading search engine is merely a bit player. Google referred only about...

I use blogspot, and nothing for the last week from my blog is showing up in Technorati. I checked....double checked...my blog settings. Same with Technorati tags. Nothing.

Internet giant Google Inc. infringed copyright rules by posting thumbnail-size photos from other websites on its search results pages, a US judge said in a ruling issued. US District Judge Howard Matz's ruling, handed down in Los Angeles, stems from a lawsuit filed in 2004 by the pornography firm Perfect 10 Inc., which accused Google of breaching on its copyrights. The type of search with which Perfect 10 took issue is Google's "Image Search" function, which returns a page with tiny images -- known as thumbnails -- that fit the searcher's query. The image search function also allows searchers to...

<p>It was less than two years ago that Google Inc. co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin thumbed their noses at the U.S. investment banking community with an auction-based IPO and their pledge not to cave in to the short-term demands of Wall Street.</p>

While trying to find a nativity image for my last post before Christmas, I did an search for "baby jesus" on Google. This is the result. Notice that the top search result is for a sex toy that mocks Jesus. Other results on this search results page have more link traffic. A quick review of page's code shows no HTML meta information that should give it a favorable ranking. The page itself has a raw relevance ranking (search word divided by total words) of less than five percent. The only conclusion I can draw is that this page position ranking...

Wal-Mart, the nation's largest retailer, often intimidates its competitors and suppliers. Makers of goods from diapers to DVD's must cater to its whims. But there is one company that even Wal-Mart eyes warily these days: Google, a seven-year-old business in a seemingly distant industry."We watch Google very closely at Wal-Mart," said Jim Breyer, a member of Wal-Mart's board.In Google, Wal-Mart sees both a technology pioneer and the seed of a threat, said Mr. Breyer, who is also a partner in a venture capital firm. The worry is that by making information available everywhere, Google might soon be able to tell...

Wal-Mart, the nation's largest retailer, often intimidates its competitors and suppliers. Makers of goods from diapers to DVD's must cater to its whims. But there is one company that even Wal-Mart eyes warily these days: Google, a seven-year-old business in a seemingly distant industry. "We watch Google very closely at Wal-Mart," said Jim Breyer, a member of Wal-Mart's board. In Google, Wal-Mart sees both a technology pioneer and the seed of a threat, said Mr. Breyer...The worry is that by making information available everywhere, Google might soon be able to tell Wal-Mart shoppers if better bargains are available nearby. Wal-Mart...

French president Jacques Chirac yesterday pledged to help fund a new European internet search engine to rival Google and Yahoo as he railed against what he sees as the threat of Anglo-Saxon cultural imperialism. In a speech in Reims, Mr Chirac said: "We're engaged in a global competition for technological supremacy. In France, in Europe, it's our power that's at stake." Mr Chirac's intention is to provide forgivable loans to a Franco-German "multimedia search engine for the internet" being developed by French group Thomson and Deutsche Telekom. The plans reflect Mr Chirac's often-expressed concern about the omnipresence of US culture...

SAN FRANCISCO - Google Inc. is refusing to speak with reporters at CNET’s online news site after it ran a story that used Google’s chief executive to illustrate how easily the company’s search engine finds personal information. Google told News.com, the online tech news service of CNET Networks Inc., last week that it would not speak to any of its reporters for a year, according to News.com’s editor.

WARNING TO EARTH: YOU ONLY HAVE 24 HOURS TO MAKE GOOGLE YOUR DEFAULT SEARCH ENGINE In light of the recent revelations that Google is unashamedly protecting Hilary from bad press (like the rest of MSM), and disallowing certain Christian ads, I decided to go on a quest to search for the moral base of philosophy that drives the Google Inc. megabillion dollar complex. I found such a moral code called "The Ten Things" on the Google website mentioned below. After reviewing the "Ten Things" I am convinced that there is some kind of cultic mysticism going on at Google Inc's...

Ask Jeeves' search engine now can make better suggestions to users for narrowing or expanding the scope of a Web search, the Oakland, California, company plans to announce this week. The search engine has also gained an increased ability to provide specific answers to queries, an improvement that will also debut on Thursday, according to Ask Jeeves officials. Ask Jeeves has had these two features, but now both have been significantly improved, the officials say. "These two new products we're introducing are about enhancing the core search experience," says Rahul Lahiri, the company's vice president of search product management. Along...

Chicago, IL, Apr. 27 (UPI) -- A new feature launched last week by Google.com, the Internet's most popular search engine, allows users to see all of their past searches, but privacy experts told UPI's The Web the service easily could be abused.People should review the site's privacy policy before using the service," said Tom Guida, an intellectual property attorney with Baker & Hostetler LLP in New York City.

PARIS, April 9 - As president of the French National Library, Jean-Noël Jeanneney has good reason to feel safe from the frequent incursions of American popular culture into contemporary French life. With its collection of 13 million books, the library is a reassuring symbol of the durability of French literature and thought. Yet Mr. Jeanneney is not one to lower his guard. He grew alarmed last December when he read that Google planned to scan 15 million English-language books and make them available as digital files on the Web. In his view, the move would further strengthen American power to...

Calling fellow Freepers, I just put my website up last week and am trying to get all the hits I can for the search engines. I went to the Saddle Club and that day it spiked and I thought wow...what if I asked all you great Freepers for a minute of your time. I am trying to get pulled up on search with the big dogs. lol Can you help?

Spanish Internet company Terra Lycos has retained investment bank Lehman Brothers to explore a possible sale of its U.S. Internet business, including its flagship Lycos.com Web site, according to a document obtained by CNET News.com. What's new: Terra Lycos has retained investment bank Lehman Brothers to sell Lycos.com in hopes of focusing on its Spanish-language businesses.Bottom line: The sale would unwind the $12.5 billion merger of Terra Networks and Lycos, struck during the height of the dot-com boom. A sale of the unit, which is based in Waltham, Mass., would unwind the $12.5 billion merger of Lycos and Terra Networks,...

Receive FREE updates by email: | Google Applies Double Standard to Political Vendors By William R AlfordNovember 19, 2003 As a commercial entity, the popular search engine Google has joined the esteemed ranks of media and academic organizations that have a responsibility to be objective but instead choose to manage information based upon an apparent ingrained partisan and socio-ideological bias. Some background: Early this past summer, Accuracy In Media's Conservative Mall offered Jason Fodeman's book, How to Destroy a Village: What the Clintons Taught a Seventeen Year Old. Soon after our marketing staff placed it into Google's 'sponsored links'...

Microsoft runs search for a way to take over internet giant Google David Teather in New York Saturday November 1, 2003 The Guardian The phenomenal success of Google, the internet search engine, has attracted the attention of the biggest name in hi-tech business, the Microsoft founder Bill Gates. Microsoft is said to be pursuing talks to buy the Silicon Valley firm. Google, which was started from scratch five years ago by two Stanford computer science graduate students, was recently valued at between $15bn and $25bn. According to a report in the New York Times, Microsoft executives have approached Google...

Internet search leader Google Inc. could go public early next year and is considering holding a huge online auction of its shares, according to a report published Thursday.The Financial Times (FT) said in its online edition that Google executives met with a number of investment bankers last week to gauge their interest in an initial public offering (IPO). A decision by the 5-year-old search giant to go public is expected to create enormous excitement among investors, the FT said, and the company could be valued at between $15 billion and $25 billion.Furthermore, Google is reportedly considering an online auction of...

Thu September 18, 2003 09:13 PM ET By Elinor Mills Abreu SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - An Internet search company on Thursday filed a $100 million antitrust lawsuit against VeriSign Inc., accusing the Web address provider of hijacking misspelled and unassigned Web addresses with a service it launched this week. VeriSign's new SiteFinder service takes searches for ".com" and ".net" Web addresses that are not spelled correctly or have not yet been registered and redirects them to a VeriSign Web page that includes options and pay-for-placement topic links. Since it was launched on Monday, the SiteFinder service has drawn widespread criticism...

Do Major Search Engines frequent Free Republic??

I have noticed that the search engine won't work if your search term is "FBI". It will find articles about the FBI if you know another title word, but FBI won't work. For instance, there is an article posted called "The Coup D'etat At The FBI". If I type in FBI, the search comes up empty. If I type in "coup" the article is found. What gives?

I have discovered (perhaps I am not the first) a huge vulnerability in our use of the Web and for the sake of future discussion I will coin a term and call it 'web noise'. While concerns about computer virus's and email scripts dominate the news about computer attacks, a subtle version has been introduced by what appears to be folks inspired by rap lyrics. Imagine one day you want to search for some information and you get the garbled text results like the following large sites illustrate: freakystylz.comyuppychat.com web.iwasateenagewolfman.com As you drill down the links int these large trees...