The Google search engine has been criticised for removing entries from its web, image and news search services for various reasons, and for refusing to accept certain types of advertising.

On March 6th 2007 the front cover story of the WSJ print edition, is an extensive Wall Street Journal Investigative Report by Peter Waldman about myCFO illegal tax scams, titled "HOUSE OF 'CARDS' Fling With Tax Shelters Haunts Silicon Valley, Funded by Tech Barons, MyCFO Inc. Sold Deal The IRS Later Nullified" that begins with "John Doerr is the dean of Silicon Valley venture capitalists, one who helped launch tech icons like Google and Sun Micro Systems. A billionaire, he works with rock star Bono to fight poverty in Africa and with others to increase aid for education and medical research. Mr. Doerr is less well known for one investment that didn't pan out. Called myCFO Inc., the firm set out to provide rich people a full menu of financial [wealth] services...less than two years after myCFO began selling them in 2000, the Internal Revenue Service said they were bogus. My CFO ceased independent operations five years ago, but..." and goes on at in great detail about complex activities involving Tax and banking transactions resulting in multiple judgments finding Fraud, RICO violations, and government criminal investigations of parties involved. Then details how myCFO, the Board of Directors of myCFO, and legal advisor Larry Sonsini, and others advisors are the subjects of this article and multiple investigations. The Wall Street Journal Investigative Report can be found at WSJ online at [1] with links to all supporting reference documentation.

This censored WSJ news article text only can also be found as posted on AOL as posted by Associated Press at [2] and as reprint article with reference citation links at [3] but this WSJ myCFO article can not be found via Google Search or Google Image or Google News Search.

This WSJ Front Page article, contents, legal court Judgments, records, references and people involved can not be found on Google Web Search or Google NEWS Search. Other article on the same issue page are findable but this attributable reliable source (WSJ) front cover article was specifically and wholly censored from Google News and Google Search from release March 6th 2007. This WSJ article continues to be censored from Google Search and Google News Search through March 19th 2007.

Specifically Google News censored this Wall Street Journal Investigative Report about myCFO which featured, on the front page, four full facial color photos (with photo source attributions) with names of individuals discussed in the article under the headline "One That Got Away, Some of the tech stars who backed myCFO:" John Doerr, partner at Kleiner Perkins. James H. Clark co-founder of Netscape Communications Corp. John Chambers, Cisco Systems Inc.'s chief executive and James Barksdale, former Netscape chief executive". Google Search and Google News has censored search of this WSJ article related to these individuals, myCFO and others involved. This is prominent front page news from a reliable news source who attributes to public records, court judgments, and reference documents available online at WSJ [www.wsj.com] are currently censored by Google.

Subjects of this Wall Street Journal article, these myCFO Board of Directors, are closely related to Google as investors. John Doerr, also serves on Google's Public [Board of Directors]. One prominent Google Board Director, Mike Moritz, announced resignation from Google’s Board of Directors within weeks of this March 6th 2007 front page Wall Street Journal Investigative Report print publication and its subsequent censoring by both Google News and Google Search [[4]].

On October 22, 2002, a study reported that approximately 113 Internet sites had been removed from the German and French versions of Google.^[1] This censorship mainly affected White Nationalistic, Nazi, anti-semitic, and radical Islamic websites. Under French and German law, hate speech and Holocaust denial are illegal. Google complies with these laws by not including sites containing such material in its search results. There is no direct way to check whether a search has been affected in this way.

Google Germany allows no links through AdWords to websites containing images of naked people, going so far as to even ban sites displaying nude male upper torsos.^[2]

Controversy has occurred over Google's decision to adhere to the Internet censorship policy in mainland China, colloquially known as, "The Great Firewall of China". Google.cn search results are filtered so as not to bring up any results concerning the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, sites supporting the independence movements of Tibet and Taiwan or the Falun Gong movement, and other information perceived to be harmful to the People's Republic of China. This is interpreted by some activists as against the "Don't Be Evil" corporate philosophy of Google.

The People's Republic of China (PRC), whose human rights have been criticized by people in both China and the international community, has in the past restricted citizen access to popular search engines such as Altavista, Yahoo!, and Google. The mirror search site elgooG has been used by users in mainland China to get around blocked content. This complete ban has since been lifted. However, the government remains active in filtering Internet content. In October 2005, Blogger and access to the Google Cache were made available in mainland China; however, in December 2005, some mainland Chinese users of Blogger reported that their access to the site was once again restricted.

In January 2006, Google affirmed its intent to filter certain keywords given to it by the government of the PRC. The restrictions will apply to thousands of terms and websites.^[3] The censored content will appear on a website called google.cn. Google was heavily criticized for the move, yet it claims it is necessary to keep the PRC government from blocking Google entirely, as the case of the 2002 block^[4]. The company does not plan to give the government information about the users who search for blocked content, and will inform users of restricted categories.^[5] Google states on its help pages that it does not censor content, but it does block pages as demanded for in certain jurisdictions, such as DMCA requests in the United States.

Most Chinese Internet users did not express much concern about Google's choice, with one blogger saying that censorship is a fact of life in China and Google could not have done any better.^[6][7] Also, Google offers to Chinese Internet users a choice that protects their privacy better than existing search engines available in China, since Google keeps confidential records of its users outside China, unlike domestic search engines that could be compelled by the government to hand over information at any time.^[8] The following message appears at the bottom of the Google search result page whenever results are blocked: "In accordance with local laws and policies, some of the results have not been displayed." Currently, Google is the only major China-based search engine to explicitly inform the user when search results are blocked or hidden.

On the other hand, Google has been accused of hypocrisy for agreeing to China's demands and fighting the US government's requests for information concerning Google-users, by groups such as Reporters Without Borders[5]. Critics say that Google had made a great deal of its mission statement, in that it was different from other "evil" Internet corporations, to gain support when it started.

On February 5, 2006, Google.com was banned by China Telecom in an attempt to force users of Google toward the Google.cn domain, however the ban was lifted shortly thereafter.

On February 14, 2006, some Internet users participated in a "mass breakup with Google" whereby users agreed to boycott Google on Valentine's Day to show their disapproval of the Google China policy.^[9][10]

A simple test can be performed to quantify the number of pages which google.cn censors as compared to those listed in google.com. Search using this string to compare the approximate dot-com index differential:

site:.com

Other top level domains can be compared similarly (.org, .cn, etc.). Searches for essential html tags, such as <html> returns the difference for all domains.

In 2002 Google was found to have censored websites that provided critical information about Scientology, in compliance with the United States' DMCA legislation.[6] [7]

Google replaced the banned results with links to the DMCA complaint that caused the site to be removed. The DMCA complaint contains the site to be removed, and the organizations that requested the removal (e.g. [8]) The publicity stemming from this incident was the impetus for Google's making public of the DMCA notices on the Chilling Effects archive, which archives legal threats of all sorts made against Internet users and Internet sites.[9]

On March 6th 2007 the front cover story of the WSJ print edition, is an extensive Wall Street Journal Investigative Report by Peter Waldman about myCFO illegal tax scams, titled "HOUSE OF 'CARDS' Fling With Tax Shelters Haunts Silicon Valley, Funded by Tech Barons, MyCFO Inc. Sold Deal The IRS Later Nullified" that begins with "John Doerr is the dean of Silicon Valley venture capitalists, one who helped launch tech icons like Google and Sun Micro Systems. A billionaire, he works with rock star Bono to fight poverty in Africa and with others to increase aid for education and medical research. Mr. Doerr is less well known for one investment that didn't pan out. Called myCFO Inc., the firm set out to provide rich people a full menu of financial services...less than two years after myCFO began selling them in 2000, the Internal Revenue Service said they were bogus. My CFO ceased independent operations five years ago, but..." and goes on at in great detail about complex activities involving Tax and banking transactions resulting in multiple judgments finding Fraud, RICO violations, and government criminal investigations of parties involved. Then details how myCFO, the Board of Directors of myCFO, and others are the subjects of this article and multiple investigations. This Wall Street Journal Investigative Report can be found at WSJ online at [10] with links to all supporting reference documentation. This news article text only can also be found as posted on AOL by AP at [11] but are also Google News censored.

This WSJ Front Page article, contents, legal court Judgments, records, references and people involved can not be found on Google Web Search or Google NEWS Search. Other articles on and in the same issue page are search findable, but this particular attributable reliable source (WSJ) front cover article was specifically and wholly censored from Google News and Google Search from release March 6th 2007. This WSJ article continues to be censored from Google Search and Google News Search through March 19th 2007.

Specifically Google News censored this Wall Street Journal Investigative Report about myCFO which featured, on the front page, four full facial color photos (with photo source attributions) with names of individuals discussed in the article under the headline "One That Got Away, Some of the tech stars who backed myCFO:" John Doerr, partner at Kleiner Perkins. James H. Clark co-founder of Netscape Communications Corp. John Chambers, Cisco Systems Inc.'s chief executive and James Barksdale, former Netscape chief executive". Google Search and Google News has censored search of this WSJ article related to these individuals, myCFO and others involved. This is prominent front page news from a reliable news source who attributes to public records, court judgments, and reference documents available online at WSJ [www.wsj.com] are currently censored by Google.

Subjects of this Wall Street Journal article, these myCFO Board of Directors, are closely related to Google as investors. John Doerr, also serves on Google's Public [Board of Directors].

In early 2006 Google removed several news sites from its news search engine because complaints were received about various articles that were critical of Islam.^[11][12] These included the The New Media Journal, which contained phrasing such as in the "World of Islam ... it is common for the men to have multiple wives, and harvest many children with each of his wives to train for martyrdom."^[13] Other sites removed included MichNews and The Jawa Report.

These sites remain accessible from Google's main search page as normal, but are no longer included in Google News. Google responded by stating that "We do not allow articles and sources expressly promoting hate speech viewpoints in Google News, although referencing hate speech for commentary and analysis is acceptable".

On January 12, 2007, the news site Uruknet stopped appearing in the Google News index.^[14]

The March 6th 2007 Wall Street Journal Investigative Report included front page full facial images of myCFO board of directors members can be found at WSJ online at [12] with links to all supporting reference documentation. This image and article reprint can also found at [13]. The news image contains full facial images of "former" myCFO Board of Directors members including John Doerr who also sits on the Google Board of Directors, John Chambers the Chairman and CEO of Cisco Systems who also sits on the Cisco Board of Directors, or Jim Barksdale who also sits on the FedEx Board of Directors, and James Clark myCFO's founder. This and these front page Wall Street Journal facial images of myCFO Board of Directors cannot be found on Google Image Search.

Censored 2007 Wall Street Journal Investigative Report of myCFO Front Page WSJ News Images of Board of Directors

File:WSJ Cover myCFO Board Photos.png

In February 2003, Google stopped showing the adverts of Oceana, a two-and-a-half-year-old non-profit organization, which was protesting the environmental effects of a major cruise ship operation's sewage treatment practices. Google claimed that their editorial policy states, "that Google does not accept advertising if the ad or site advocates against other individuals, groups, or organizations." In 2004, this ban was partially lifted, allowing more positive ads from Oceana to be displayed, but some confusion remains about the criteria for banning.^[15]

• Google Censorship - How It Works
• Localized Google search result exclusions
• Report examines a newspaper-led campaign to have a site removed from both its host and the Google search index
• The Anti-Google search engine index: List of alternate and uncensored search engines
• WSJ Investigative Report Cover Article
• AP AOL Report from WSJ