No censorship for Google Instant

But surfers say it has merely been relaxed and may beu00a0in 'now on, now off' mode

Google's predictive text-based search-before-you-type tool called 'Google Instant' was launched in India yesterday, exactly a month after it was done internationally without any censorship of search results, or so it seems.

In fact, we were able to get search results for the several so-called taboo topics which Google Instant is supposed to be censoring, according to the American hacker magazine 2600.com, which had compiled a list of these terms on its official website.

"After a spate of ridicule and criticism internationally, Google seems to have relaxed its censorship on the product for now. If they censor a word like sex, they also automatically end up censoring Sensex.

That's how ridiculous it had become," ethical hacker and cybersecurity guru Vijay Mukhi said. Other surfers said that the censorship seems to be in 'now on, now off' mode.

Vinay Goel, head of products, Google India, last month said, "We get more than a billion searches every day.

So, we take an algorithmic approach to removals, and just like our search algorithms, these are imperfect. We will continue to work to improve our approach and are listening carefully to feedback from our users."

Pushing It?

Even the word 'are' was being censored if used after words like Jews, Christians, Catholics, born-again Christians, atheists, Muslims, Mexicans, Buddhists, etc. That would have meant that no search results would have turned up ifu00a0 'Germans are' was searched a month ago.