Good Afternoon Readers!
Today I would like to take the post to discuss a little bit about the challenges, censoring, and monitoring that Google is currently facing both nationally and internationally.  Seems like some governments are really trying to limit Google’s reach.  So here we go!
1. The Swiss Federal Court system has mandated that all Google Street View images of people and license plates be blurred.  Even if Google has to blur them by hand.  The technology that Google uses to great anonymity in Street View snap shots doesn’t blur 100% of the objects it is supposed to. The Swiss Court wants to ensure the privacy of its citizens and says that this gap in the Google technology will violate that right.  On the other hand, Google has argued that, especially if other countries follow in Switzerland’s path, the manual blurring will be too expensive. Other parts of this ruling include a few other guidelines for how Google street view should be conducted, including guidelines saying that Google must buy local advertising to alert Swiss citizen to when Google will be coming to take photos for the program, and guarantee that sensitive locations such as homeless shelters and women’s crisis centers be treated confidentially.
2. Google is forced to censor it’s auto-complete option in Italy, after a plaintiff typed in his own name and discovered that the auto-complete terms were negative and called him a ‘con man’.  Google is disappointed by this ruling as well, saying that it is not their intention to suggest libelous material in conjunction with anyone, but that the suggestions are created by the same computer algorithms that sort all other material in search’s on the site.  However, since the court upheld the ruling, Google has to figure out some other way to make sure that the auto-complete options present material that is benign…
3. It is very likely that Google will face an investigation by the Federal Trade Commission or the Justice Department by the end of this year.  While the ‘blog-o-sphere’ has been all a-buzz in comparing the investigation to the Microsoft case a little more than a decade ago, which resulted in Microsoft mostly being publicly shamed for monopolizing the market, but had little other effect on the company.  However, the cases in Europe prove that members of the EU seem a bit more serious about restricting the power of the all mighty Google.  Stay posted here to see what happens…

What do YOU think will happen?  Tell me and Denver SEO, Inc, a Denver SEO firm, what you think about this latest crackdown on Google.