Convalesco

Most of the readers of this blog, know enough of Google Inc. Google is the owner of blogspot. In the recent years Google has earned the respect of the world-wide open source and internet community because of it’s image. In the past Google has used the quote “we are not evil“, to diversify itself from Microsoft who’s profile is heavily damaged since the raise of the internet, due to it’s discussible politics over time.

Later in 2005, Google received the internet community outrage when it agreed with the Chinese government to censor unwanted content. Google China was created and the image of Google was damaged, although I guess the revenues have rose considerably.

Conspiracy theories about Google and censorship are not that common although they exist. Well, there are even worst conspiracy theories alleged Google to be supported by the CIA or other government agencies.

Google has embraced the open source community since day one and apparently it’s a winning choice. Gmail was a success the Google API is almost everywhere in Freshmeat, Google Sumer of Code is popular as ever and the hits just keep on coming!

The services offered by Google, (Maps, Earth, Trends, etc) are really important and unimaginable before for us to use. Who could tell my father that I would be able to locate our home from my mobile phone using a 3G internet connection, ten or fifteen years ago.

On the other hand, Google has to be very very careful when it comes to a users privacy. In many occasions Google has denied to publicise the id of it’s blogspot or gmail users. This again, it’s a winner, because if Google gets involved in any high profile story regarding privacy, where it’s actions may damaged an innocent user, even “a posteriori “, may have serious consequences.

Google offers a service and it heavily relies on it’s user base. That’s why it’s not so keen to turn it’s back on it’s users. Yes, Google services are excellent, but you can get the same services, maybe even better ones by looking at smaller competitors or at specialised firms. It may not be as easy as it sounds, but while Microsoft is hard to compete because already owns the Desktop sector, by large, Google is one click away. It’s not the same. There are dozens of thousands of companies world-wide that depend on Microsoft’s operating system. How many companies would have serious issues if Google loses it’s place as the best global search engine? Not so many for sure.

In Greece, this summer we faced a never-seen war from the Government and a number of famous, probably corrupted and extremely powerful – for the Greek standards –  journalists against the blogs. Specifically against the blogs. The former major procurator, released an article, in a way of opinion on blogs and bloggers privilege to privacy. Apparently, for the procurator, Mr. Sanidas, even a critique made by a blog, that could be accused as defamatory, is enough to raise it’s privacy, without the written permissions of the procurator. The police will have to decide in each case what to do.

In Greece, the local internet police department is really keen to do everything in order get publicity and please, even controversial popular figures such as Mr. Liakopoulos in the famous case of Blogme.gr . This is just one of the many cases where the Greek internet police department showed an unprecedented eager to explore the case, even jail the poor guy, just for owning an RSS aggregator, showing a complete lack of knowledge of the… internet itself.

The last victim of this outrageous censorship was Troktiko. But the case is different, it’s much bigger and way more important. Troktiko turned into a couple of months the most popular Greek news site. This is because of it’s concrete and satirical way, the speed with which the news appeared on the website and mostly because of it’s revelations for political scandals, which turned the Greek political lifestyle in to a nightmare the last year.

It also targeted the famous, Greek journalist, Triantafyllopoulos. The allegations of Mr. Triantafyllopoulos with bribery, corruption and others are common on many blogs and forums in the Greek online community. He is not respected by many high profile, independent, political and social blogs.

Mr. Triantafyllopoulos has become famous for unveiling big cases in the past, regarding famous people. However, many times he was accused of false accusations to high profile politicians and businessmen. By the time justice had drop Mr. Triantafyllopoulos accusations, due to lack of evidences and reasonable doubt situations, the victims were not able to establish their image, because the press was not paying anymore attention to the specific case.

Mr. Triantafyllopoulos accuses Troktiko of conspiracy against him and sees enemies behind it. People who try to exploit it’s position by spreading falsified news. Even so, this in no way justifies the drop of privacy for the author behind Troktiko. Numerous facts regarding the past though, do not help the prominent journalist position on the matter.

What is the crime of Troktiko blog anyway? The problem with Troktiko as with other blogs, is that people in Greece has been tired of the corrupted one-sided press which is controlled by the government and few homies. The power of blogs is exactly that: Quick and uncensored flow of information. This is what the government pressed by few major publishers and TV holders is trying to control: the uncensored flow of information.

Now, Google comes into play. For us, the Greeks and the international Google users, this is a case scenario which must be resolved in one way, just to give a message to our authorities: They are not above the European and international privacy laws. While it would be hard for a local provider to go against the absurd will of the state, it is not hard for Google to do so, hence protect its users for unjustified accusations.

The point here is that, we should not even care if Troktiko or any other blog for that matter writes truths or lies. The problem is that a blog, a user, a website is censored by the state and accused just because a prominent journalist and a few friends of his, were hosted in the lines of the blog. Is that illegal? It is illegal for me to write that I consider someone to be corrupted? Is it defamation? Can I express publicly my opinion on any matter or on just a couple of matters without being sued? If the victims in question were not famous journalist and newspaper owners would the police even take this case?

This is the right time for Google to show, for what is worth that, it can protect it’s users best interests and in the long run, it’s own.

update: I have sent an email, yesterday, on Google’s blog, feedback section complaining about the banning of Troktiko. Apparently many other Greek bloggers did so. After the examination on the blog, blogspot.com (which means Google) did not find any material that could have been described as defamatory, illicit, etc. I can’t tell if they even read my email. One thing matters most though, that Troktiko is back on track and that’s because Google raised it’s shield.