Michael Gray has an insightful comment on Google’s reaction to Lyndon‘s linkbait hoax story: Google has too much power. This quote in particular struck a chord with me:

“Remember friends authoritarian dictatorships start by controlling what information the people get to see, hear, and read. It doesn’t matter if they are censoring jokes, or hoaxes today, what matters is they are going in and changing the rules of the game, midstream, just because they didn’t like the way things were turning out.”

Like I asked in the Independent Webmaster’s Manifesto:

If knowledge is power;

And information is knowledge;

And Google controls the distribution of the Western world’s information;

Then isn’t Google the most powerful entity in the West?

Government is going to have to step in sooner rather than later, because Google is Big Brother. Consider the Google/Google-related services you probably use, and how much information this gives Google on you:

1. Google search
2. Google blogsearch
3. Gmail
4. Google chat/ Google talk
5. Orkut
6. AdWords
7. Google Desktop search
8. Mozilla w/ Google toolbar
9. Blogger/Blogspot
10. Google Page Creator
11. Youtube / Google Video
12. Google Analytics
13. Jotspot (G Wikis)
14. Google Docs, featuring

• Google Word
• G Excel
• G Powerpoint

Google’s already shown that they’re willing to censor their results, by altering the Tiananmen Square SERPs to remove references to the massacre committed by the Chinese government against its own people there in 1989. (They make a note of the fact that the SERPs are censored, but so what? Admitting that you’re doing evil doesn’t make it any better.) It’s a matter of time before Google censors results in the West.