This is wrong. Google should aim to provide the best possible result for the search. If that is an copyrighted videostream on a non-authorized site (e.g. a stream of all of the episodes of the series i'm googling for), this should be exactly the first result. And not a lame but authorized preview of 30 seconds.<p>Already found myself using duckduckgo in such cases, imagining the results were better.
There are a lot of interesting signals for web spam and poor web content. I don't know if this one is very good. In particular I see this scenario:<p>1) Google algorithmically genreates take down notices on youtube, they move this over to search results.<p>2) Algorithms 'err on the side of caution' with regard to fair use.<p>3) Every page that quotes or excerpts a copyrighted work gets flagged.<p>4) So Google 'manually' makes exceptions for sites they strongly believe won't engage in poor behavior (NY Times, Techcrunch, whatever)<p>5) No new web site that reviews products or provides critical analysis ever makes it to Google's front page.<p>That might be a stretch, the auto-flag stuff on YouTube is out of control, and then trying to use that as a signal in results is just inviting abuse. Black hat SEOs are malicious enough without dealing with 'Copyright joejobs'<p>[ Full disclosure: I work at a search engine blekko.com ]
I wonder what the secondary incentive effects of this will be. I see three possibilities:<p>1. Encourage copyright owners to send more takedowns to Google Search, since those takedowns will be "more powerful".<p>2. Encourage targeted sites to send more counter-notifications since a Google Search takedown has an effect on an entire site's ranking, not just a particular link.<p>3. Encourage shared sites (hosting providers, etc.) to shut down particular users or areas that get a lot of Google Search takedowns, to stop the spillover effect on the rest of the site.<p>I don't know which of these effects will matter the most, but I suspect at least one of them will be behind a significant unexpected consequence of this change.
Speaking of deteriorating Google search results, my latest peeve is when a search shows dozens of results from the same domain. There used to be the much more sensible "show more results from this domain" link. I have a hard time imagining why Google thinks the new way is better, my guess is some designers wanted to remove the link because they thought it was "cleaner".<p>More signs that designers, lawyers and MBAs are moving to the fore forcing engineers out of the way at Google Search.
I wonder if this has anything to do with Google wanting to server more and more paid content through Google Play and Youtube. Will Google be on our side or their side when the next SOPA bill appears?
So if you want to decrease a competitor's search engine placement, would you just have to file C&D notices on them?<p>I don't see how the amount of C&D notices correlates with value to users. Google does not appear to be benefiting its users in doing this.
My first reaction on hearing this is the by <i>demoting</i> unauthorized content they will end up indirectly <i>promoting</i> authorized content.<p>And I don't know how I feel about this. From what we've seen with Youtube where unwarranted claims have taken down videos very much under fair use, I don't want Google automatically demoting search results because of a claim made by another party.<p>I foresee this causing no small amount of contention.
Google has not shown that it is able to competently handle copyright complaints. YouTube copyright take down notices happen all the time for legitimate content, chances are a similar ratio of false positives for site content.
Sounds like the path to breaking Google's "monopoly" has just been revealed...<p>Seriously, unless it's just the faintest hint of influence I can see this blowing up in their face. Takedown notices are too ubiquitous and too often bogus.
<a href="http://dmcarank.staticloud.com" rel="nofollow">http://dmcarank.staticloud.com</a><p>DMCARank is a Google Custom search that only displays results from the top 50 domains with a high number of DMCA takedown requests (<a href="http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/removals/copyright/domains/?r=all-time" rel="nofollow">http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/removals/copyright/...</a>).
In addition to this being a dubious signal for measuring result quality, this could have a chilling effect for sites concerned about SEO. We've seen the bizarre rain-dance that businesses are already willing to do to try to improve their position in Google results, and now we can add "avoid fair use" to that dance.
Oh man, they should've never started with copyright removals in the first place (although I get that it's near impossible to do). This new filter has the same abuse potential as "negative SEO", where competitors posted so many spam links to good sites that they were dropped from the first page (with the competitor's site ranking higher as a result).
What happens if you have two pages, each listing the takedown notices applied to the other? Seed the pages periodically and wouldn't you get a pretty good measure of the popularity of your taken-down links by ranking them based on how often they are taken down?
This will mean ore traffic for <a href="http://www.filecrop.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.filecrop.com</a> and <a href="http://www.filestube.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.filestube.com</a>.
With Google increasing it's content footprint over the years, it's interesting to see how the search group treats other Google groups. It's entirely possible to spend a day on the internet without leaving Google web properties (except hn, of course)