[LINK] NSW Ombudsman Website Search powered and blocked by Google

Fernando Cassia fcassia at gmail.com
Wed Feb 15 17:22:10 AEDT 2012


On Tue, Feb 14, 2012 at 20:26, Tom Worthington
<tom.worthington at tomw.net.au> wrote:
> Presumably this has to do with the Ombudsman's office providing
> information translated into other languages. Perhaps this is making
> Google suspicious: http://www.etranslate.com.au/

On a related or unrelated note Google Translate
http://translate.google.com used to offer the option of "translate a
URL".

That option is no longer available, and now Google either offers an
option of some Javascript blob that you must copy-paste into your
website to offer translation, OR, install the Google Toolbar, which
I'm sure also does other nasty things.

http://translate.google.com/translate_tools?hl=en

Of course, removing the "translate URL" entry field from
http://translate.google.com also gives an advantage to Google's own
Chrome and its built-in "web page translation" feature.

http://support.google.com/chrome/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=173424

"Google Chrome's built-in translation bar helps you read more of the
web, regardless of the language of the webpage.

2008 screenshot showing the now missing "translate a URL" entry field
http://www.chromeaplicaciones.info/imgfiles/9/image/google-translator-redesign-2008-5-large.png

Removing features to a web page to later add them to its own software
as "features" and denying them to other surfers certainly qualifies in
my view as an abuse of dominant position.

Where the US DOJ and antitrust regulators when one needs them?.

FC
-- 
During times of Universal Deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act
- George Orwell



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