For example, searching for Linux in Bing shows Microsoft product placement within the search suggestions. Though this lets every IT professional grin from ear to ear, it could have major impact on “not so professional” people when they want to see what “this so called Linux” is about and rely on search suggestions.

Google instead shows suggestions that are pretty useful, when someone wants to get in touch with Linux.
In general it seems that Google tries to avoid product placement within the suggestions. Searching for “reader” for example doesn’t show any related content to Google Reader.

The same applies to the search for SQL. On the Bing hand it shows product placement for Microsoft’s SQL related products, Google on its hand offers way more universal suggestions.

Don’t get me wrong. Although I’m an open source addict, I’m not a Microsoft hater. I’d actually use Microsoft software in several areas if I have to. SQL Server 2008 for example is an awesome piece of software, but when it comes to the Internet they still seem to struggle.
If I’m searching for something I want to get to the result and not being bothered by subtle advertising and I definitely want to get a proper, almost universally valid search result, of course. Google makes this just right and I guess that’ll last a couple more years since there’s still no real competitor in the race. They still claim that search is their main product, of course.

Google’s power is simplicity, Microsoft makes it too complicated. It’s that easy.

The background picture at bing.com that changes every 24 hours and comes with several overlays to get additional information is a really nice idea to pass time and actually makes Bing more pleasant. How often do I browse the wikipedia clicking from one article to another to learn stuff I haven’t even heard of last week? Two times a week at least.
But why do I have to install Silverlight when I want to go back to last days picture? Couldn’t this have been done without the need to install additional software? This way it’s kinda obvious that Microsoft wants to push its alternative to Flash through their search engine and as I said, it’s all about the results and not about binding people to its own solutions.

The Internet is all about interoperability. Something that Microsoft obviously still don’t get and that’s sad because a little more competition in the search engine business would be quite nice.

So long Douglas, and thanks for all the fish!

Koehntopp already mentioned this two years ago, now it actually happened. Blame me that I haven’t done this until now.

You might want to consider to do so as well. There’s an open service called Libre.fm which seems to fill the gap although it’s still under heavy development.

(Link to image)

Besides that, things are getting worse here since the law’s text actually doesn’t refer to child pornography anymore, but rather to a list of websites being blocked by the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA). That means that there’s no appropriation anymore between blocked sites and child pornography and that anything could be blocked by the authorities without the knowledge of the people since the filter list is supposed to be confidential.

It’ll be the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) which will control these filter lists whereby it’ll be decided whether the access to a specific website is permitted or prevented. These lists won’t be made public, of course, which means that there won’t be any legal possibility to check the content of those lists. Therefore those lists will be expendable in the easiest possible way, e.g. blocking websites critizising the government or p2p related websites, . By experience in other countries, e.g. Denmark, Finland and Thailand, it’s easy to realize that content filtering is something you don’t want to have in the world:

• Finland’s internet censorship domain lists for example also includes the finnish anti-censorship website lapsiporno.info
• Thailand’s filter list for example contains 800 YouTube videos, several web boards and many sites which are dealing with critizism of its king
• Denmark with almost 4.000 filtered websites is also filtering legal websites like the Dutch transport company Vanbokhorst

Besides the fact that filtering via the Domain Name System (DNS) is kind of pointless since all one needs to do is to change the DNS server’s address to a different DNS server which doesn’t consider the government’s censorship lists, the energy and money would be better spent on getting the people who are offering child porn via their servers to others. Almost all of these servers are located in middle-european countries and the States (information based on the CCC’s analysis of the filter lists). Therefore, it wouldn’t be impossible to find and charge those people who are offering child pornography.

In addition, there’s no law which regulates internet censorship in Germany. The major provider are downright blackmailed by the government not to be mentioned with the same breath as child pornography.

According to the german website Zensurprovider the following provider are working together with the government to establish internet censorship by their own choice:

1. Alice
2. Arcor
3. Deutsche Telekom
4. Kabel Deutschland
5. O2
6. Vodafone

Other provider will act after laws have passed legislation:

1. 1&1
2. Congstar
3. Freenet (Strato)
4. KielNET
5. NetCologne
6. Versatel

At last the provider which don’t want to have something to do with internet censorship:

1. EWE TEL
2. M-net
3. Manitu
4. QSC

We’ve been there today from 9 to 10am at the press and visitor center of the german government, with approx. 200 people to express our deep concerns about internet censorship while Ursula von der Leyen, Joerg Ziercke (head of the BKA) and people from Germany’s five biggest Internet provider entered the building via its backdoor to sign the contract and to celebrate its closure.

At least we’ve been heared by the media with a lot of press coverage for a 200 people demonstration (e.g. that’s me demonstrating on a picture at Spiegel Online, thanks for the feature), but it still looks like that the law will be legislated on April 22th. Hopefully this won’t happen since the Internet inter alia has been built to let people freely decide which information they want to access or publish and not to be told what they may access and what not.

Image sources:

1. Stopp sign from zensurprovider.de
2. Image from depressingnews.net (cc-by-nc-sa)
3. Taken from Taknil’s soup.io