Google’s autocomplete search results can be a great help when you know part of what you’re looking for, or when you want to be lazy, but they also carry a certain political weight. What they don’t offer up is as telling as what they do, and now Grooveshark joins the illustrious ranks of options that don’t appear automatically, as spotted by TorrentFreak.
Grooveshark is a free music streaming service that provides on demand track playback of over 15 million songs, both on its website, through mobile apps and via streaming embeds. The company is trying to play nice with artists and record labels with a host of self-promotion and analytics tools, but it’s definitely not exactly kosher by DMCA standards. Google has been filtering piracy-related sites and offerings from its instant search and autocomplete stuff for a couple years now, and the effect has had a demonstrated effect on traffic to sites like The Pirate Bay.
What’s interesting about this, however, is that Google hasn’t actually been that put-upon in terms of DMCA takedown requests related to the Grooveshark domain. The Grooveshark terms seems to have made the blacklist around the same time as the successful appeal by Universal Music Group won out against Grooveshark back in April, as TorrentFreak points out. Google factors in a number of things when deciding what terms get the boot, but DMCA takedown requests seem to be a key ingredient.
You can still Google “Grooveshark” directly and get results that are actually relevant, but it doesn’t change the fact that taking it out of search suggestions hurts visits and means fewer users will probably discover the service at all. The problem here is that it demonstrates just how much influence Google has in deciding the moral compass of the Internet, and what constitutes a “good” service and what gets classified as “bad,” and in cases like this, it’s hard not to see that as a decision that favours the party with the most money and influence.
Grooveshark may be treading questionable ground with its business model (not that I believe that personally), but it’s at least a little scary that Google’s in a position to decide that for us. There’s not an official blacklist; it still shows up in results. But this subtle shaping using its more advanced search tools is somehow almost more sinister.
We’ve reached out to both Google and Grooveshark but have yet to hear back as of publication time.
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