6 ms·

Yeah, which is kind of annoying... I’m European and shed no tears whatsoever for the supposed loss of precious “second amendment” rights (never had such a thing

by qubex 9y ago

Yeah, which is kind of annoying... I’m European and shed no tears whatsoever for the supposed loss of precious “second amendment” rights (never had such a thing, never wanted such a thing), but I work in the paint business where we use electrostatic guns to apply powder coatings... and those have all disappeared (as has “electron gun” of the cathode ray tube variety), all of which is quite annoying collateral damage.

SerLava 9y ago
Oh lord. This is the most technologically sophisticated company in the world. And they just... wow.
- ghostbrainalpha 9y ago
  I didn't think this could be accurate. I went to Google Shopping myself and searched for "Glue Gun"... no results, holy shit.
  - michaelbrooks 9y ago
    Yup, same for "water gun" someone at Google needs their head checking. This is incredible on so many levels.
- dictum 9y ago
  There's an in-house precedent too: https://web.archive.org/web/20110616041821/http://news.cnet.com/2100-1032_3-5198125.html https://web.archive.org/web/20110616041821/http://news.cnet....
  - glibgil 9y ago
    > Matt Cutts, the Google engineer who designed SafeSearch four years ago, said his algorithm looks for a "relatively small" number of trigger words in a Web page's address. If one of those words appears, the SafeSearch algorithm puts the address on a block list and does not take the next step of evaluating the content of the site. "We try to find the best trade-off of precision, recall and safety," Cutts said. "People who opt in to SafeSearch are mostly OK with us being on the conservative side." Matt “Cutts” your traffic since 2000. Though he’s not at Google anymore he was always emblematic of the stop-doing-that-on-my-site-(that-I-crawled-the-internet-to-put-you-on) culture at Google. Always taking a machete to a scalpel fight and always to the customer facing side first and never to the ingest and analysis side
- 13of40 9y ago
  The silly thing is they already perfected this technology for porn years ago. If you go to GIS and type in "naked mole rat", as disturbing as the results are, there's no porn.
protonimitate 9y ago
Yeah this way to over-reaching. It's a cheap ploy to gain public favor. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think Google shopping results were a major contributing factor in gun sales.
- harshreality 9y ago
  Online direct-buying of guns is mostly fiction. You (if you're an appropriately licensed federal firearms dealer) can sell guns commercially. You can put up a webpage advertising those guns. You can accept payment for those guns. But you cannot ship the guns to the buyer. You must ship the guns to another licensed federal firearms dealer (FFL) designated by the buyer, and that second FFL completes the transfer, according to all federal regulations which include a background check or equivalent. Where there's confusion is that it's technically legal, if the State doesn't have any regulations, to conduct a private sale from one state resident to another resident of the same state. The catch is you can't do that as a business — or, if you get caught, you'll be in serious trouble. Being in the business of firearms dealing requires a federal license. If you have a webpage advertising guns, even if it's a mere few guns from your "private collection", it's going to be very difficult to convince the ATF that you shouldn't be required to have a license. And anyone who thinks FFL regulations are too loose, just try getting one (other than a C&R). There are ebay-like firearm trading websites, but a lot of the sellers are FFLs, and even the ones who aren't probably aren't in your state, so the transfer would have to go through a FFL, as previously mentioned. It's conceivable that you could find someone, on such a site, who lives in your home state, with whom you could arrange a private transfer, and it could be they're genuinely not in the business of selling firearms (i.e. it really is a gun from their private collection), but those types of sites are unlikely to show up in google shopping search results to begin with.
- jack6e 9y ago
  Not to mention they only banned words whose predominant circulation is among uninformed media and those whose only association with firearms is that same media. Google decided "gun" was dangerous, but not "firearm", "AR", "556", "Saint", or "Ruger". Consider this: Google blocked the search of Burgundy wine, but not the simple search for "556" that returns a result for 2,000 rounds of ammunition in the caliber most AR-15s take [1]. They almost absolutely could not demonstrate greater ignorance or incompetence, or a greater desire to make a toothless and ineffective political statement. [1] https://www.google.com/search?output=search&tbm=shop&q=556&oq=556 https://www.google.com/search?output=search&tbm=shop&q=556&o...
lucideer 9y ago
I'm European and the above link for guns, germs, steel returns results for me. Does it not for you?
- daveFNbuck 9y ago
  It doesn't return anything for me in the US.
- DanBC 9y ago
  I'm in UK. I get no results, with and without quote marks. https://imgur.com/a/r5hMb https://imgur.com/a/r5hMb
SllX 9y ago
Yet you can still search for AK-47s and M1911s through Google Shopping just fine.
- DanBC 9y ago
  But it's not returning any weapons. It's returning tea towels with pictures of weapons.
smnrchrds 9y ago
It's even worse than I imagined. As of now, at least in Canada, Google Shopping returns zero result when I search for "Burgundy" [1]. For comparison, Amazon.com returns 100,000 results for the same query [2]. We have known about Scunthorpe problem [3] for decades now. There is no excuse for this. [1] https://www.google.ca/search?q=Burgundy&tbm=shop https://www.google.ca/search?q=Burgundy&tbm=shop [2] https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?field-keywords=Burgundy https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?field-keywords=Bur... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scunthorpe_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scunthorpe_problem
- smsm42 9y ago
  [1] works fine for me (US). Is it for Canada only?
  - smnrchrds 9y ago
    It appears to have been fixed. I should have taken a screenshot instead of posting a link :(
- true_religion 9y ago
  Why would they block this?
  - karakot 9y ago
    burGUNdy
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  I get piles of results for burgundy in the US.
  - Slansitartop 9y ago
    > I get piles of results for burgundy in the US. They've had several hours to change their filters since this story went live.
bassman9000 9y ago
I don't care about your rights because I don't like them Where have I heard that before.

by qubex 9y ago

SerLava 9y ago

Oh lord. This is the most technologically sophisticated company in the world. And they just... wow.

ghostbrainalpha 9y ago
I didn't think this could be accurate. I went to Google Shopping myself and searched for "Glue Gun"... no results, holy shit.
- michaelbrooks 9y ago
  Yup, same for "water gun" someone at Google needs their head checking. This is incredible on so many levels.
dictum 9y ago
There's an in-house precedent too: https://web.archive.org/web/20110616041821/http://news.cnet.com/2100-1032_3-5198125.html https://web.archive.org/web/20110616041821/http://news.cnet....
- glibgil 9y ago
  > Matt Cutts, the Google engineer who designed SafeSearch four years ago, said his algorithm looks for a "relatively small" number of trigger words in a Web page's address. If one of those words appears, the SafeSearch algorithm puts the address on a block list and does not take the next step of evaluating the content of the site. "We try to find the best trade-off of precision, recall and safety," Cutts said. "People who opt in to SafeSearch are mostly OK with us being on the conservative side." Matt “Cutts” your traffic since 2000. Though he’s not at Google anymore he was always emblematic of the stop-doing-that-on-my-site-(that-I-crawled-the-internet-to-put-you-on) culture at Google. Always taking a machete to a scalpel fight and always to the customer facing side first and never to the ingest and analysis side
13of40 9y ago
The silly thing is they already perfected this technology for porn years ago. If you go to GIS and type in "naked mole rat", as disturbing as the results are, there's no porn.

protonimitate 9y ago

Yeah this way to over-reaching. It's a cheap ploy to gain public favor. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think Google shopping results were a major contributing factor in gun sales.

harshreality 9y ago
Online direct-buying of guns is mostly fiction. You (if you're an appropriately licensed federal firearms dealer) can sell guns commercially. You can put up a webpage advertising those guns. You can accept payment for those guns. But you cannot ship the guns to the buyer. You must ship the guns to another licensed federal firearms dealer (FFL) designated by the buyer, and that second FFL completes the transfer, according to all federal regulations which include a background check or equivalent. Where there's confusion is that it's technically legal, if the State doesn't have any regulations, to conduct a private sale from one state resident to another resident of the same state. The catch is you can't do that as a business — or, if you get caught, you'll be in serious trouble. Being in the business of firearms dealing requires a federal license. If you have a webpage advertising guns, even if it's a mere few guns from your "private collection", it's going to be very difficult to convince the ATF that you shouldn't be required to have a license. And anyone who thinks FFL regulations are too loose, just try getting one (other than a C&R). There are ebay-like firearm trading websites, but a lot of the sellers are FFLs, and even the ones who aren't probably aren't in your state, so the transfer would have to go through a FFL, as previously mentioned. It's conceivable that you could find someone, on such a site, who lives in your home state, with whom you could arrange a private transfer, and it could be they're genuinely not in the business of selling firearms (i.e. it really is a gun from their private collection), but those types of sites are unlikely to show up in google shopping search results to begin with.
jack6e 9y ago
Not to mention they only banned words whose predominant circulation is among uninformed media and those whose only association with firearms is that same media. Google decided "gun" was dangerous, but not "firearm", "AR", "556", "Saint", or "Ruger". Consider this: Google blocked the search of Burgundy wine, but not the simple search for "556" that returns a result for 2,000 rounds of ammunition in the caliber most AR-15s take [1]. They almost absolutely could not demonstrate greater ignorance or incompetence, or a greater desire to make a toothless and ineffective political statement. [1] https://www.google.com/search?output=search&tbm=shop&q=556&oq=556 https://www.google.com/search?output=search&tbm=shop&q=556&o...

lucideer 9y ago

I'm European and the above link for guns, germs, steel returns results for me. Does it not for you?

daveFNbuck 9y ago
It doesn't return anything for me in the US.
DanBC 9y ago
I'm in UK. I get no results, with and without quote marks. https://imgur.com/a/r5hMb https://imgur.com/a/r5hMb

SllX 9y ago

Yet you can still search for AK-47s and M1911s through Google Shopping just fine.

DanBC 9y ago
But it's not returning any weapons. It's returning tea towels with pictures of weapons.

smnrchrds 9y ago

It's even worse than I imagined. As of now, at least in Canada, Google Shopping returns zero result when I search for "Burgundy" [1]. For comparison, Amazon.com returns 100,000 results for the same query [2]. We have known about Scunthorpe problem [3] for decades now. There is no excuse for this. [1] https://www.google.ca/search?q=Burgundy&tbm=shop https://www.google.ca/search?q=Burgundy&tbm=shop [2] https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?field-keywords=Burgundy https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?field-keywords=Bur... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scunthorpe_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scunthorpe_problem

smsm42 9y ago
[1] works fine for me (US). Is it for Canada only?
- smnrchrds 9y ago
  It appears to have been fixed. I should have taken a screenshot instead of posting a link :(
true_religion 9y ago
Why would they block this?
- karakot 9y ago
  burGUNdy
dragonwriter 9y ago
I get piles of results for burgundy in the US.
- Slansitartop 9y ago
  > I get piles of results for burgundy in the US. They've had several hours to change their filters since this story went live.

bassman9000 9y ago

I don't care about your rights because I don't like them Where have I heard that before.