By Andre Damon – wsws.org: Google forced Forbes magazine
to remove a story documenting the tech giant’s manipulation of search
results to promote Google Plus, its social media network, according to a
former writer for the magazine.
Kashmir Hill, a longtime technology reporter for Forbes and current contributor to Gizmodo,
went public with the revelation last Thursday in a post titled, “Yes,
Google Uses Its Power to Quash Ideas It Doesn’t Like—I Know Because It
Happened to Me”
In 2011, Hill participated in a meeting between Google salespeople and Forbesemployees, in which representatives of the search giant sought to encourage Forbes to integrate its web site with Google Plus, Google’s failed competitor to Facebook.
The salespeople told her that adding a “share” button for Google Plus
would boost their domain’s results in search rankings. Hill wrote,
“This sounded like a news story to me. Google’s dominance in search and
news gives it tremendous power over publishers. By tying search results
to the use of Plus, Google was using that muscle to force people to
promote its social network.”
