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Why Google And Facebook Need To Go Dark To Protest SOPA

339 points by gluejar 15y ago

jonnathanson 15y ago
Google might be well served by some sort of partial blackout on its home page, but Facebook would need to get more creative -- and, dare I say it, more social. A blackout of any kind on Facebook would create a minor to major annoyance for an audience that we can presume is largely ignorant to apathetic about SOPA. If, instead, Facebook released profile widget of some sort -- say, a standardized black box as one's default profile image, with a solidarity message or link -- they'd probably see better uptake. People would be curious about why their friends were blacking out their profile pictures, and they'd click to find out more. Even if for no other reason than to see what the fuss was about, or to jump on a trendy bandwagon. In this way, Facebook would be piquing interest, rather than creating confusion. Anecdotally, I've seen friends use this tactic to great effect when promoting anything from parties, to launches, to causes. It works because it spreads easily, it's hard not to notice, and it's less easily ignored or tuned out than generic site-wide messaging. And, as the folks at Facebook know all too well, we tend to notice what our friends are doing more readily than we notice what disembodied corporate messages are saying.
- avree 15y ago
  Agreed. Something similar to http://www.blackoutsopa.org/ http://www.blackoutsopa.org/ would be most effective for spreading awareness on Facebook.
  - Stwerner 15y ago
    Good idea. Changing my profile picture to the STOP SOPA one right now.
- chc 15y ago
  I'm a lot confused. Are you saying that people wouldn't notice if you replaced the whole Facebook site with a protest message, but if you offer a protest widget to "an audience that we can presume is largely ignorant to apathetic about SOPA", it will spread like wildfire? That doesn't make any sense to me.
  - DrHankPym 15y ago
    Taking down Facebook would be pointless. How else will people talk about SOPA? I think disabling features with a heavy theme of "SOPA will change the internet" will get a lot of discussion / attention on Facebook.
    - Timshel 15y ago
      I think that a day without google or/and facebook would generate way more discussion afterward than just a simple change of skin.
  - Wilduck 15y ago
    They would notice, but they wouldn't be interested. Their response would probably be something along the lines of "I hope this gets taken care of quickly so facebook can go back to normal." The cool thing about the profile picture idea is that it makes it clear that your friends are opting in to this protest. It'll make you curious as to what's going on.
  - jonnathanson 15y ago
    Pretty much what Wilduck said. People would absolutely notice a service blackout, or a blanket reskinning of the entire site. But they wouldn't necessarily care. Additionally, they'd first be annoyed about it before stopping to read about why it was happening -- if they even decided to read about it at all. I suspect Facebook would generate as much resentment and/or confusion over the blackout as it would interest in the cause. Conversely, a more "organic" message uptake strategy would be to seed the profile badges or pictures to highly influential users with big, engaged followings. These people would influence others within their networks, who would in turn influence their own friends. The opt-in nature of the protest would not engender any resentment toward Facebook, and it might be received more readily by the users -- each of whom could also act as an evangelist for the cause if they learned about it and engaged with it. Even having influential Facebook employees (Zuckerberg, et al.) replace their profile pics with protest badges would work wonders and get lots of pickup. However you want to slice it, my point is that it's better to use Facebook to spread the word than to spite Facebook to spread the word.
- zalew 15y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slacktivism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slacktivism
- Natsu 15y ago
  I hope that Google at least does a doodle educating people about the issue and urging them to contact their representatives. I'm less sure about what Facebook could do, but I hope they at least do something to inform people. Also, it's clear that the threat of crazy legislation isn't going to go away any time soon. I hope that we turn this into an internet holiday of sorts and celebrate "Internet Freedom Day" every year from now on. Hopefully it could turn into the Internet's version of the Fourth of July.
- joe_the_user 15y ago
  I agree that a Facebook blackout would generate annoyance. And there's a valid point-of-view from which that annoyance makes sense. Facebook altogether is hosting the content of myself and my friends - laid out using Facebook's software but still our stuff. We may all like the idea of going black that day but only if we ask. It's as if a web host decided all of the sites it hosted would go black for a given day as a political protest. It wouldn't wash well. Sure you can say that since people don't pay for Facebook, they can't complain. Whatever the merits of that argument, it certainly isn't how everyone would see things, especially the less Internet-savvy. Given this, it wouldn't seem like a way to convince people.
phzbOx 15y ago
SOPAthetic
wyck 15y ago
What about large user based content sites? Wordpress and Tumblr account for millions of post/day.
- Achshar 15y ago
  But they are divided into individual users and the space belongs to the users and not tumblr/wordpress. I don't think changing other's blogs would be a very good idea and will be frowned upon.
- Hemospectrum 15y ago
  Tumblr has already had a blackout event. Users loading the home page for the first time that day saw text that was randomly changed to strings of "██████" and images defaced with censor bars. (Subsequent viewings showed only the anti-SOPA banner at the top.)
calbear81 15y ago
I've been following the SOPA issue on the periphery and I agree there needs to be more awareness and publicity around it but I don't find a blackout to be the most effective way of defeating this legislation. Reddit is fine because they don't have that much money to lose by going dark for a day but we know clearly that money has a big influence on the outcome of elections and political races. Why not take the revenue that would have been forfeited to a single day blackout which would probably be about $100+ million (between Google, Facebook, and let's say 2 other sites) and funnel it towards a Super-PAC that will use it instead to fund opposition ads during election time against those who supported the legislation. What about finding a way to influence the primary supporters of SOPA, content creators and media companies? These companies will rely on the very tech companies they may damage with SOPA in the future to be the primary channels for distribution (YouTube, Netflix, Spotify, etc.), which means that there's leverage that can be applied. Just my two cents.
- 27182818284 15y ago
  >much money to lose by going dark for a day Google doesn't need to blackout and stop service, they just could change their homepage's logo to have a black censored bar across it and that is all it would take.
- throwaway64 15y ago
  >much money to lose by going dark for a da I very much doubt any site that is as user-content driven as Google has more to lose from a day of service outages than an eternity dealing with the fallout of SOPA
untog 15y ago
It would be truly amazing to see this. Reddit going dark is fantastic, but to an extent it's "preaching to the choir"- Reddit is already the centre of SOPA activism. Google, Facebook or Twitter going dark would be a huge statement. Is there a movement for other sites to go dark on Jan 18th as well? My startup going dark by itself wouldn't have a huge impact, but if it was part of a national day of activism it could be great.
- bmf 15y ago
  Many on Reddit are probably in agreement with the anti-SOPA movement, but that is why they are good to reach out to. Is there a phrase for "mobilizing the choir"?
- stfu 15y ago
  I believe Facebook is the least one willing to stand up for civil rights - as long as not about some 3rd world dictatorship. With their ongoing questionable practice in regards to privacy they are certainly going to duck and cover as soon as something controversial comes up. Google and especially Twitter are from my view substantially more supportive to causes like these.
  - nextparadigms 15y ago
    That's too bad, because under a law like SOPA, the social sites will be affected first.
ericb 15y ago
While this would make a statement, somewhere I saw a good point--someone will be googling to see if the snake that bit them was poisonous. Google is now critical infrastructure, like power. If it goes out, people will quite possibly die.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- moocow01 15y ago
  Bing.com ?
- josefresco 15y ago
  How long does it take to see that Google is down and switch to Bing? It adds 5-10 seconds to your search which if you factor in the resulting time it takes for you to read the article seems minimal. Also the thought of using Google to literally "save your life" from a snake bite is a whole separate argument.
  - ericb 15y ago
    For you, or for my elderly neighbor, who just has a bookmarked google page and knows of nothing else? Note: This is actually true--I "fixed their computer" recently.
- orijing 15y ago
  I'm not trying to troll but is Google much better for that query than Bing? Or is it lack of awareness of Bing?
  - nextparadigms 15y ago
    Google seems a lot better with long tail terms than Bing.
- burgerbrain 15y ago
  I don't think that is a particularly good point. If a snake bites you, and you are not sure if it is poisonous or not, assume that it is and go to the hospital. Life or death health issues should not be googled, they should be taken care of by professionals.
krschultz 15y ago
I don't think Google & Facebook need to go dark to achieve this. Going dark is not something either company would do - the cost is enormous and it would draw real ire from politicians. But Google simply changing it's logo for a day would be enough to magnify the publicity around this issue. That doesn't impact their users or their bottom line, but it gets the job done.
- pavel_lishin 15y ago
  > Going dark is not something either company would do Until someone decides that they're hosting infringing content, of course.
  - kevinh 15y ago
    I find it exceedingly hard to believe that Google would be brought down as a repercussion of Google. It's very unlikely that any widespread, powerful websites (like Google or Facebook) would be taken down, because removing them from the ecosystem would prompt an enormous user reaction. Say what you will about the intelligence of those involved with SOPA, they know about how much they can rock the boat.
    - pavel_lishin 15y ago
      > as a repercussion of Google. I think you meant SOPA. > It's very unlikely that any widespread, powerful websites (like Google or Facebook) would be taken down, because removing them from the ecosystem would prompt an enormous user reaction. Probably not. I haven't read SOPA in detail, so I don't know what the procedure is - who gets to decide whether to shut the site down or not? What if the clerk working that particular desk is an 80 year old luddite and has no idea what a google is, but knows for sure it shouldn't be stealing all those movies or whatever? And what happens to Facebook if I suddenly start uploading video clips from unreleased movies? The obvious answer is that Facebook shuts down my account, but what if some RIAA goon sees it before that happens and pulls the SOPA lever, or some congressman? If they can't use SOPA to shut down an infringing website, how could they have justified using all that cash to lobby for it?
recoiledsnake 15y ago
It would be a good idea to run a big black banner on Google instead of going completely dark. Or one interstitial ad that interrupts search for 10 seconds only once a day.
methodin 15y ago
Google would have a lot more to lose than Facebook. Most of the posts on Facebook are not necessarily links etc... and even if the links were banned it wouldn't have that much of an effect on Facebook itself, other than people getting PO'd that the link they click on are decommissioned. Most people tend to be smart enough to realize this is not Facebook's fault. Google on the other hand is almost exclusively driven by other content so having a sudden lack thereof would be far more detrimental. Therefor I would be surely surprised if Facebook did something like this while I could every well see something happening on Google's side - although offsetting the money being poured in support of SOPA to counteract it would also go a long way to help.
- xxbondsxx 15y ago
  I've heard two interpretations of the "going dark" idea; one is to completely shut off the main functionality of the site, and the other is to simply _change the background color_ of the main landing page and have a banner about SOPA. Something that's eye-grabbing / shocking and encourages users to act would be immensely effective, and doesn't necessitate turning off the site.
tsieling 15y ago
My money is on the side that says they're too far in bed with politics to chance it.
- jstrom 15y ago
  This strikes me as a far more important consideration than the loss of revenue or potential harm being discussed in the other topics. Blacking out Google's front page will reach 38 Million (or 12% of the population) [1]. Compare that to the effort involved in more traditional political advertising--The largest TV audience is around 27 Million [2] (And drops by 50% to the most popular non-football program). There's also the question of how invasive the ads are. I'd bet a notice on the Google homepage getting in your way every time you do a search will have far more impact than newspaper ad that you skip over once you realize it isn't an article. We know there's a level of discomfort concerning business's influence on politics. There was fallout over the supreme court decision in Citizens United v. FEC--the issue is being brought up again [3]. Google has a lot of power over the internet and a lot of knowledge of what people do on-line. Most of us can overlook that since we don't see a personal impact (except every few months a site vanishes from Google's results and the owner's blog post shows up on HN). Though they are getting attention from congressional inquiries and lawyers seeking to kill opposing sites. Consider the fallout if Google went ahead. You have people uneasy with how businesses can effect politics from just the abstract idea of donations being shown a very concrete example. You have politicians with the power to regulate Google being shown that Google can be a danger to them. I don't see how they could risk losing their perceived neutrality and harmlessness. [1] Using the statistics from http://google.com.hypestat.com/ http://google.com.hypestat.com/ for a rough estimate: 129M unique visitors daily, 30% from the United States, that's 38.7M or 12% of the population. [2] http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/top10s/television.html http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/top10s/television.html [3] http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204368104577139100369896494.html http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405297020436810457713...
lhnn 15y ago
Google: "If SOPA passes, the search you're about to enter wouldn't be possible."
AndyFromKC 15y ago
Just Dark any Facebook/Google Traffic going to Washington DC. Not enough to cause stock/revenue/world panic... just enough to cause localized panic where the target audience can feel it.
HaloZero 15y ago
I still believe Wikipedia going black would also make a decent statement without causing giant economic losses. They've done it before in Italy, and it worked there.
cookiecaper 15y ago
I posted this elsewhere, but I think it got buried. IMO it is worth reposting here: Assuming this spreads, I believe a potential ramification of major sites blacking out would be new laws that would attempt to make such black outs illegal. It could be seen as equivalent to strikes in essential service industries like transportation. Such strikes are semi-regulated and governments can and have ordered strikers back on the job to maintain public order. I see this possibility as a potentially major unintended consequence of putting Facebook "on strike".
- drivingmenuts 15y ago
  I really don't see how a law like that would ever get past the Supreme Court, seeing as how it's a major restriction of 1st Amendment rights. It would also be a major signal to every web app out there that this is the wrong country to be in. edit: wrong institution.
  - nitrogen 15y ago
    By the time something reaches the Supreme Court, years of damage have been done.
- harryf 15y ago
  Agree - a blackout will essentially kill any negotiation and change the topic to one purely about power and authority, which defeats the purpose. Selectively demonstrating the potential impact of SOPA by censoring some of its supporters might work but in the end this is about negotiation not "going nuclear"
dandrews 15y ago
Utilities cannot "go dark". The power company couldn't go dark to make a political point. The water and gas companies couldn't either. Google has acquired (for better or worse) utility status. Interrupting service to make a political point would do unbelievable damage to Google itself. Better to just outspend Hollywood, if Google has the will to defeat SOPA.
- Osiris 15y ago
  In what way? I don't see how the two equate. Utilities are natural monopolies with strict regulations. They can't shut down because you couldn't just buy your power from someone else. That's not the case at all for Google. Google has every right to suspend offering their service at anytime. The only way the government could force them to stay open would be to buy a controlling interest in the company like they did with the banks.
  - dandrews 15y ago
    You are correct: my use of the word "utility" was not very rigorous. Nevertheless a lot of people depend on Google, and if Google took themselves down capriciously it would demonstrate that they can't be counted on. Of course they have every right to go black, but I can't help but feel they'd suffer the consequence in a big way. Not even Google can buy a reputation back.
ryandvm 15y ago
Going dark for a day is a pretty scary proposition for a company whose continued success is largely based on habitual usage. As a practical matter, Google search is not really that much better than Bing. Making 600 million people use your competitor's equally capable product for a day would be pure insanity. Especially for such speculative gain. I can't believe people think Google is dumb enough to try a blackout.
- jrgifford 15y ago
  Look at it this way. Either they do a blackout and (probably) save their entire company, or don't and lose everything. While I'm not a businessman, I'd rather take the chance of making everyone use Bing/DuckDuckGo/Yahoo/Whatever for a day rather than risk losing my entire companies main product(s).
  - jeiting 15y ago
    False dichotomy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma
    - jrgifford 15y ago
      That is true, I over simplified things. However, the point remains.
cyberroadie 15y ago
They should make it go dark in Washington only, these companies are good in targeted 'advertisement' anyway. I wonder how the government would react on a blackout targeted only at them
- GregBuchholz 15y ago
  They should also target the offices of the MPAA, RIAA, Viacom, etc. for a blackout. And if people really want to do something effective, they should boycott movie theaters, iTunes, and Netflix streaming that day. Am I the only one cynical enough to think that the Google is only against SOPA so they'll get a special exemption from the law, like McDonald's and the health care law? http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/health/2010-10-07-healthlaw07_ST_N.htm http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/health/2010-10-07-h...
baby 15y ago
Google should display "Google is unavailable today because of SOPA [bla bla bla] If you still want to access google go to google.fr or any european google".
dbbo 15y ago
I liked this one even better: http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2012/01/11/reddits-sopa-blackout-admirable-but-google-and-facebook-must-follow/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2012/01/11/reddits-so...
thwest 15y ago
Why go completely dark? Partially put black censor bars over most of the search results. Throw in a prominent banner to a page explaining SOPA and a button to remove the censorship. Then there is less chance of users assuming some technical problem, and a greater chance for education.
lr 15y ago
Google and Facebook should remove all references to all politicians who supports SOPA, even if they are running for president.
tlogan 15y ago
No - Google and Facebook will not go dark and SOPA will pass. The big internet companies such as Google and Facebook etc. will probably get some exception from SOPA (like they will not liable if they allow easy censoring tool for big production companies) and because of that they will be quiet. Look, paying few million to lobbyists to exempt you from some legalization is much more efficient - and in parallel you can kill competition like duckduckgo.com
gernb 15y ago
No, if Google and Facebook went dark they'd prove the political power that they have and would immediately set in motion massive regulation of themselves by governments. It would be a small victory followed by losing the war.
teja1990 15y ago
One thing Google can do instead of a total blackout is a black background google . Instead of its white zen background, if they go total black , people would be interested why this change and will read why google did this. Blocking will only make people go for another search engine.

339 points by gluejar 15y ago

Google might be well served by some sort of partial blackout on its home page, but Facebook would need to get more creative -- and, dare I say it, more social. A blackout of any kind on Facebook would create a minor to major annoyance for an audience that we can presume is largely ignorant to apathetic about SOPA. If, instead, Facebook released profile widget of some sort -- say, a standardized black box as one's default profile image, with a solidarity message or link -- they'd probably see better uptake. People would be curious about why their friends were blacking out their profile pictures, and they'd click to find out more. Even if for no other reason than to see what the fuss was about, or to jump on a trendy bandwagon. In this way, Facebook would be piquing interest, rather than creating confusion. Anecdotally, I've seen friends use this tactic to great effect when promoting anything from parties, to launches, to causes. It works because it spreads easily, it's hard not to notice, and it's less easily ignored or tuned out than generic site-wide messaging. And, as the folks at Facebook know all too well, we tend to notice what our friends are doing more readily than we notice what disembodied corporate messages are saying.

avree 15y ago
Agreed. Something similar to http://www.blackoutsopa.org/ http://www.blackoutsopa.org/ would be most effective for spreading awareness on Facebook.
- Stwerner 15y ago
  Good idea. Changing my profile picture to the STOP SOPA one right now.
chc 15y ago
I'm a lot confused. Are you saying that people wouldn't notice if you replaced the whole Facebook site with a protest message, but if you offer a protest widget to "an audience that we can presume is largely ignorant to apathetic about SOPA", it will spread like wildfire? That doesn't make any sense to me.
- DrHankPym 15y ago
  Taking down Facebook would be pointless. How else will people talk about SOPA? I think disabling features with a heavy theme of "SOPA will change the internet" will get a lot of discussion / attention on Facebook.
  - Timshel 15y ago
    I think that a day without google or/and facebook would generate way more discussion afterward than just a simple change of skin.
- Wilduck 15y ago
  They would notice, but they wouldn't be interested. Their response would probably be something along the lines of "I hope this gets taken care of quickly so facebook can go back to normal." The cool thing about the profile picture idea is that it makes it clear that your friends are opting in to this protest. It'll make you curious as to what's going on.
- jonnathanson 15y ago
  Pretty much what Wilduck said. People would absolutely notice a service blackout, or a blanket reskinning of the entire site. But they wouldn't necessarily care. Additionally, they'd first be annoyed about it before stopping to read about why it was happening -- if they even decided to read about it at all. I suspect Facebook would generate as much resentment and/or confusion over the blackout as it would interest in the cause. Conversely, a more "organic" message uptake strategy would be to seed the profile badges or pictures to highly influential users with big, engaged followings. These people would influence others within their networks, who would in turn influence their own friends. The opt-in nature of the protest would not engender any resentment toward Facebook, and it might be received more readily by the users -- each of whom could also act as an evangelist for the cause if they learned about it and engaged with it. Even having influential Facebook employees (Zuckerberg, et al.) replace their profile pics with protest badges would work wonders and get lots of pickup. However you want to slice it, my point is that it's better to use Facebook to spread the word than to spite Facebook to spread the word.
zalew 15y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slacktivism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slacktivism
Natsu 15y ago
I hope that Google at least does a doodle educating people about the issue and urging them to contact their representatives. I'm less sure about what Facebook could do, but I hope they at least do something to inform people. Also, it's clear that the threat of crazy legislation isn't going to go away any time soon. I hope that we turn this into an internet holiday of sorts and celebrate "Internet Freedom Day" every year from now on. Hopefully it could turn into the Internet's version of the Fourth of July.
joe_the_user 15y ago
I agree that a Facebook blackout would generate annoyance. And there's a valid point-of-view from which that annoyance makes sense. Facebook altogether is hosting the content of myself and my friends - laid out using Facebook's software but still our stuff. We may all like the idea of going black that day but only if we ask. It's as if a web host decided all of the sites it hosted would go black for a given day as a political protest. It wouldn't wash well. Sure you can say that since people don't pay for Facebook, they can't complain. Whatever the merits of that argument, it certainly isn't how everyone would see things, especially the less Internet-savvy. Given this, it wouldn't seem like a way to convince people.

phzbOx 15y ago

SOPAthetic

wyck 15y ago

What about large user based content sites? Wordpress and Tumblr account for millions of post/day.

Achshar 15y ago
But they are divided into individual users and the space belongs to the users and not tumblr/wordpress. I don't think changing other's blogs would be a very good idea and will be frowned upon.
Hemospectrum 15y ago
Tumblr has already had a blackout event. Users loading the home page for the first time that day saw text that was randomly changed to strings of "██████" and images defaced with censor bars. (Subsequent viewings showed only the anti-SOPA banner at the top.)

calbear81 15y ago

I've been following the SOPA issue on the periphery and I agree there needs to be more awareness and publicity around it but I don't find a blackout to be the most effective way of defeating this legislation. Reddit is fine because they don't have that much money to lose by going dark for a day but we know clearly that money has a big influence on the outcome of elections and political races. Why not take the revenue that would have been forfeited to a single day blackout which would probably be about $100+ million (between Google, Facebook, and let's say 2 other sites) and funnel it towards a Super-PAC that will use it instead to fund opposition ads during election time against those who supported the legislation. What about finding a way to influence the primary supporters of SOPA, content creators and media companies? These companies will rely on the very tech companies they may damage with SOPA in the future to be the primary channels for distribution (YouTube, Netflix, Spotify, etc.), which means that there's leverage that can be applied. Just my two cents.

27182818284 15y ago
>much money to lose by going dark for a day Google doesn't need to blackout and stop service, they just could change their homepage's logo to have a black censored bar across it and that is all it would take.
throwaway64 15y ago
>much money to lose by going dark for a da I very much doubt any site that is as user-content driven as Google has more to lose from a day of service outages than an eternity dealing with the fallout of SOPA

untog 15y ago

It would be truly amazing to see this. Reddit going dark is fantastic, but to an extent it's "preaching to the choir"- Reddit is already the centre of SOPA activism. Google, Facebook or Twitter going dark would be a huge statement. Is there a movement for other sites to go dark on Jan 18th as well? My startup going dark by itself wouldn't have a huge impact, but if it was part of a national day of activism it could be great.

bmf 15y ago
Many on Reddit are probably in agreement with the anti-SOPA movement, but that is why they are good to reach out to. Is there a phrase for "mobilizing the choir"?
stfu 15y ago
I believe Facebook is the least one willing to stand up for civil rights - as long as not about some 3rd world dictatorship. With their ongoing questionable practice in regards to privacy they are certainly going to duck and cover as soon as something controversial comes up. Google and especially Twitter are from my view substantially more supportive to causes like these.
- nextparadigms 15y ago
  That's too bad, because under a law like SOPA, the social sites will be affected first.

ericb 15y ago

While this would make a statement, somewhere I saw a good point--someone will be googling to see if the snake that bit them was poisonous. Google is now critical infrastructure, like power. If it goes out, people will quite possibly die.

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
moocow01 15y ago
Bing.com ?
josefresco 15y ago
How long does it take to see that Google is down and switch to Bing? It adds 5-10 seconds to your search which if you factor in the resulting time it takes for you to read the article seems minimal. Also the thought of using Google to literally "save your life" from a snake bite is a whole separate argument.
- ericb 15y ago
  For you, or for my elderly neighbor, who just has a bookmarked google page and knows of nothing else? Note: This is actually true--I "fixed their computer" recently.
orijing 15y ago
I'm not trying to troll but is Google much better for that query than Bing? Or is it lack of awareness of Bing?
- nextparadigms 15y ago
  Google seems a lot better with long tail terms than Bing.
burgerbrain 15y ago
I don't think that is a particularly good point. If a snake bites you, and you are not sure if it is poisonous or not, assume that it is and go to the hospital. Life or death health issues should not be googled, they should be taken care of by professionals.

krschultz 15y ago

I don't think Google & Facebook need to go dark to achieve this. Going dark is not something either company would do - the cost is enormous and it would draw real ire from politicians. But Google simply changing it's logo for a day would be enough to magnify the publicity around this issue. That doesn't impact their users or their bottom line, but it gets the job done.

pavel_lishin 15y ago
> Going dark is not something either company would do Until someone decides that they're hosting infringing content, of course.
- kevinh 15y ago
  I find it exceedingly hard to believe that Google would be brought down as a repercussion of Google. It's very unlikely that any widespread, powerful websites (like Google or Facebook) would be taken down, because removing them from the ecosystem would prompt an enormous user reaction. Say what you will about the intelligence of those involved with SOPA, they know about how much they can rock the boat.
  - pavel_lishin 15y ago
    > as a repercussion of Google. I think you meant SOPA. > It's very unlikely that any widespread, powerful websites (like Google or Facebook) would be taken down, because removing them from the ecosystem would prompt an enormous user reaction. Probably not. I haven't read SOPA in detail, so I don't know what the procedure is - who gets to decide whether to shut the site down or not? What if the clerk working that particular desk is an 80 year old luddite and has no idea what a google is, but knows for sure it shouldn't be stealing all those movies or whatever? And what happens to Facebook if I suddenly start uploading video clips from unreleased movies? The obvious answer is that Facebook shuts down my account, but what if some RIAA goon sees it before that happens and pulls the SOPA lever, or some congressman? If they can't use SOPA to shut down an infringing website, how could they have justified using all that cash to lobby for it?

recoiledsnake 15y ago

It would be a good idea to run a big black banner on Google instead of going completely dark. Or one interstitial ad that interrupts search for 10 seconds only once a day.

methodin 15y ago

Google would have a lot more to lose than Facebook. Most of the posts on Facebook are not necessarily links etc... and even if the links were banned it wouldn't have that much of an effect on Facebook itself, other than people getting PO'd that the link they click on are decommissioned. Most people tend to be smart enough to realize this is not Facebook's fault. Google on the other hand is almost exclusively driven by other content so having a sudden lack thereof would be far more detrimental. Therefor I would be surely surprised if Facebook did something like this while I could every well see something happening on Google's side - although offsetting the money being poured in support of SOPA to counteract it would also go a long way to help.

xxbondsxx 15y ago
I've heard two interpretations of the "going dark" idea; one is to completely shut off the main functionality of the site, and the other is to simply _change the background color_ of the main landing page and have a banner about SOPA. Something that's eye-grabbing / shocking and encourages users to act would be immensely effective, and doesn't necessitate turning off the site.

tsieling 15y ago

My money is on the side that says they're too far in bed with politics to chance it.

jstrom 15y ago
This strikes me as a far more important consideration than the loss of revenue or potential harm being discussed in the other topics. Blacking out Google's front page will reach 38 Million (or 12% of the population) [1]. Compare that to the effort involved in more traditional political advertising--The largest TV audience is around 27 Million [2] (And drops by 50% to the most popular non-football program). There's also the question of how invasive the ads are. I'd bet a notice on the Google homepage getting in your way every time you do a search will have far more impact than newspaper ad that you skip over once you realize it isn't an article. We know there's a level of discomfort concerning business's influence on politics. There was fallout over the supreme court decision in Citizens United v. FEC--the issue is being brought up again [3]. Google has a lot of power over the internet and a lot of knowledge of what people do on-line. Most of us can overlook that since we don't see a personal impact (except every few months a site vanishes from Google's results and the owner's blog post shows up on HN). Though they are getting attention from congressional inquiries and lawyers seeking to kill opposing sites. Consider the fallout if Google went ahead. You have people uneasy with how businesses can effect politics from just the abstract idea of donations being shown a very concrete example. You have politicians with the power to regulate Google being shown that Google can be a danger to them. I don't see how they could risk losing their perceived neutrality and harmlessness. [1] Using the statistics from http://google.com.hypestat.com/ http://google.com.hypestat.com/ for a rough estimate: 129M unique visitors daily, 30% from the United States, that's 38.7M or 12% of the population. [2] http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/top10s/television.html http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/top10s/television.html [3] http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204368104577139100369896494.html http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405297020436810457713...

lhnn 15y ago

Google: "If SOPA passes, the search you're about to enter wouldn't be possible."

AndyFromKC 15y ago

Just Dark any Facebook/Google Traffic going to Washington DC. Not enough to cause stock/revenue/world panic... just enough to cause localized panic where the target audience can feel it.

HaloZero 15y ago

I still believe Wikipedia going black would also make a decent statement without causing giant economic losses. They've done it before in Italy, and it worked there.

cookiecaper 15y ago

I posted this elsewhere, but I think it got buried. IMO it is worth reposting here: Assuming this spreads, I believe a potential ramification of major sites blacking out would be new laws that would attempt to make such black outs illegal. It could be seen as equivalent to strikes in essential service industries like transportation. Such strikes are semi-regulated and governments can and have ordered strikers back on the job to maintain public order. I see this possibility as a potentially major unintended consequence of putting Facebook "on strike".

drivingmenuts 15y ago
I really don't see how a law like that would ever get past the Supreme Court, seeing as how it's a major restriction of 1st Amendment rights. It would also be a major signal to every web app out there that this is the wrong country to be in. edit: wrong institution.
- nitrogen 15y ago
  By the time something reaches the Supreme Court, years of damage have been done.
harryf 15y ago
Agree - a blackout will essentially kill any negotiation and change the topic to one purely about power and authority, which defeats the purpose. Selectively demonstrating the potential impact of SOPA by censoring some of its supporters might work but in the end this is about negotiation not "going nuclear"

dandrews 15y ago

Utilities cannot "go dark". The power company couldn't go dark to make a political point. The water and gas companies couldn't either. Google has acquired (for better or worse) utility status. Interrupting service to make a political point would do unbelievable damage to Google itself. Better to just outspend Hollywood, if Google has the will to defeat SOPA.

Osiris 15y ago
In what way? I don't see how the two equate. Utilities are natural monopolies with strict regulations. They can't shut down because you couldn't just buy your power from someone else. That's not the case at all for Google. Google has every right to suspend offering their service at anytime. The only way the government could force them to stay open would be to buy a controlling interest in the company like they did with the banks.
- dandrews 15y ago
  You are correct: my use of the word "utility" was not very rigorous. Nevertheless a lot of people depend on Google, and if Google took themselves down capriciously it would demonstrate that they can't be counted on. Of course they have every right to go black, but I can't help but feel they'd suffer the consequence in a big way. Not even Google can buy a reputation back.

ryandvm 15y ago

Going dark for a day is a pretty scary proposition for a company whose continued success is largely based on habitual usage. As a practical matter, Google search is not really that much better than Bing. Making 600 million people use your competitor's equally capable product for a day would be pure insanity. Especially for such speculative gain. I can't believe people think Google is dumb enough to try a blackout.

jrgifford 15y ago
Look at it this way. Either they do a blackout and (probably) save their entire company, or don't and lose everything. While I'm not a businessman, I'd rather take the chance of making everyone use Bing/DuckDuckGo/Yahoo/Whatever for a day rather than risk losing my entire companies main product(s).
- jeiting 15y ago
  False dichotomy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma
  - jrgifford 15y ago
    That is true, I over simplified things. However, the point remains.

cyberroadie 15y ago

They should make it go dark in Washington only, these companies are good in targeted 'advertisement' anyway. I wonder how the government would react on a blackout targeted only at them

GregBuchholz 15y ago
They should also target the offices of the MPAA, RIAA, Viacom, etc. for a blackout. And if people really want to do something effective, they should boycott movie theaters, iTunes, and Netflix streaming that day. Am I the only one cynical enough to think that the Google is only against SOPA so they'll get a special exemption from the law, like McDonald's and the health care law? http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/health/2010-10-07-healthlaw07_ST_N.htm http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/health/2010-10-07-h...

baby 15y ago

Google should display "Google is unavailable today because of SOPA [bla bla bla] If you still want to access google go to google.fr or any european google".

dbbo 15y ago

I liked this one even better: http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2012/01/11/reddits-sopa-blackout-admirable-but-google-and-facebook-must-follow/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2012/01/11/reddits-so...

thwest 15y ago

Why go completely dark? Partially put black censor bars over most of the search results. Throw in a prominent banner to a page explaining SOPA and a button to remove the censorship. Then there is less chance of users assuming some technical problem, and a greater chance for education.

lr 15y ago

Google and Facebook should remove all references to all politicians who supports SOPA, even if they are running for president.

tlogan 15y ago

No - Google and Facebook will not go dark and SOPA will pass. The big internet companies such as Google and Facebook etc. will probably get some exception from SOPA (like they will not liable if they allow easy censoring tool for big production companies) and because of that they will be quiet. Look, paying few million to lobbyists to exempt you from some legalization is much more efficient - and in parallel you can kill competition like duckduckgo.com

gernb 15y ago

No, if Google and Facebook went dark they'd prove the political power that they have and would immediately set in motion massive regulation of themselves by governments. It would be a small victory followed by losing the war.

teja1990 15y ago

One thing Google can do instead of a total blackout is a black background google . Instead of its white zen background, if they go total black , people would be interested why this change and will read why google did this. Blocking will only make people go for another search engine.