#Fukushima Namie-Machi on Google Street View

Google announced on March 4 this year that it was sending the crew to capture "Street View" of Namie-machi, Fukushima Prefecture, at the request of Mayor Baba.

Not all of Namie-machi is captured yet, but here it is. There is no one there, and houses and stores are broken, deserted; there is nothing left in the farmland along the coast. In the center of the town, there are stores side by side, one utterly collapsed, the other seemingly intact.


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I don't know if Google Japan plans to send people to the high radiation spots within Namie-machi, such as Akougi and Tsushima.

There are many in Japan who seems to think anything done by a company based in the US has something to do with "conspiracy" to defraud Japan. According to such people, the reason why Google Japan has already started showing the Street View (they said it would take a few months) is because the mayor of Namie-machi has sided with the national government, so all the goodies like Google Street View will be quickly done, as some kind of perks.

Sided with the national government? It seems that for such people, having to agree to the reorganization of the no-entry zone into three new zones in preparation for future return (as if these mayors have any choice), as pushed by the national government, is the same as colluding with the national government.

I thought of responding to someone who clearly seems to think that way, but then I looked at the desolation captured by the Street View. I'd rather thank Google instead. Thank you.

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(OT) "Hacked PCs falsify billions of ad clicks", according to Financial Times

Financial Times article (3/19/2013) says the so-called "botnet scheme" highjacked 120,000 residential computers in the US, simulated the mouse cursor movements as if there were viewers who actually visited the sites, and generated 9 billion impressions every month across over 200 sites, costing the advertisers about $6 million a month.

Built on a tower of sand...

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#Radioactive Japan: Google Japan Is Recording "Street View" in Namie-machi, One of the Most Contaminated Fukushima Towns

Mayor Baba of Namie-machi asked Google to film his town, so that the town's residents can see their neighborhoods and people in Japan and the world remember the Fukushima nuclear accident.

The entire town of Namie-machi (population 21,000) has been evacuated. Part of town is inside the 20-kilometer radius no entry zone, and the rest is inside the planned evacuation zone. Unlike Iitate-mura which is designated as planned evacuation zone but thanks to the enterprising mayor (I don't necessarily mean in a good way) has kept several factories operational ever since the accident despite the high radiation levels, I don't believe there is any business still operating in Namie-machi. (For early days after the March 11, 2011 disaster, read "Trap of Prometeus" series by Asahi Shinbun - see the right column of the blog for the link to my translation.)

The town looks just like as it was abandoned in the days after the March 11, 2011 earthquake and tsunami.

From Google Japan's blog, posted by Keiichi Kawai, group product manager (3/4/2013):

Google では、本日より、福島県双葉郡浪江町内のストリートビューの撮影を開始しました。

Today, Google will start capturing the Street View inside Namie-machi in Futaba-gun [district or county], Fukushima Prefecture.

浪江町は、現在、その半分が福島第一原子力発電所から20 キロ圏内にあたる「警戒区域」と、残り半分が「計画的避難区域」に指定されています。この度、浪江町のご依頼をいただき、Google マップのストリートビューで両区域内を撮影します。撮影は数週間程度を予定しており、数カ月後の公開を目指します。

Currently, half of Namie-machi is in the "no entry zone" inside the 20 kilometer radius from Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant, and the other half is designated as "planned evacuation zone". This time, we received the request from Namie-machi, and we will capture both zones inside Namie-machi for Google Map Street View. It will take several weeks to capture, and we are aiming at making it public in several months.

Google Street View car in Namie-machi (Click to enlarge):

More views in the video (by Google), with Mayor Baba's message:

I wonder if Google is going to measure radiation levels as they drive through Namie and capture images. I hope they do. Without that information, as one can't see radiation, Namie-machi's devastation is indistinguishable from other towns in Fukushima, Miyagi, Iwate that were destroyed by the earthquake and tsunami. Mayor Baba wants people to remember the nuclear accident and what it has done to his town and townsfolk.

On March 12, 2011 morning, several hours before TEPCO did the vent on Reactor 1, the Fukushima prefectural government was sending personnel to measure radiation levels in Futaba-gun. I think it is total BS that the governor of Fukushima insisted he and his government weren't informed of any trouble at the　nuclear plants (Fukushima I and II). They were measuring from 8AM that day in the areas surrounding both plants.

They came to Namie-machi also. At 8:39AM in Nishihara in Takase Section of Namie-machi, it was 0.04 microsievert/hour. At 8:50AM, in the same place, the radiation jumped 200-fold, to 8 microsieverts/hour. (Details are in my Japanese blog, 7/12/2012.)

Unlike Okuma-machi and Futaba-machi, Namie-machi was not told immediately to evacuate. Namie was not on the TEPCO's list to fax nuclear emergency information (the list only contained the municipalities where the plants were located - Okuma, Futaba, and Tomioka). People took time, without knowing the radiation that was already spreading. Some were taking shelters in a location they thought was safe, but it turned out that they were living in a place with 330 microsieverts/hour radiation (Akougi District in Namie-machi, according to Ministry of Education). They didn't know it, until the NHK TV crew with Shinzo Kimura came and told them about the high radiation level (Kimura measured 80 microsieverts/hour just outside the house) on March 28, 2011.

Just outside the house, Kimura measured the soil. Radioactive cesium (134+137) was 4 million becquerels/kg, iodine-131 was 23.2 million becquerels/kg.

Mayor Baba remains bitter, and we can't blame him.

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OT: Type "askew" in Google Search...(UPDATED)

Your screen goes askew...

Does anyone know any other word that does something funny in Google search?

(UPDATE) From Twitter follower brentosg, type in "do a barrel roll"...

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United Nations Wants to Control the Internet, It's "Like Handing a Stradivarius to a Gorilla" Says WSJ

In addition to the UN-operated drones, we may get the UN-managed Internet. Good luck, people.

From Wall Street Journal's Gordon Crovitz (11/25/2012):

Who runs the Internet? For now, the answer remains no one, or at least no government, which explains the Web's success as a new technology. But as of next week, unless the U.S. gets serious, the answer could be the United Nations.

Many of the U.N.'s 193 member states oppose the open, uncontrolled nature of the Internet. Its interconnected global networks ignore national boundaries, making it hard for governments to censor or tax. And so, to send the freewheeling digital world back to the state control of the analog era, China, Russia, Iran and Arab countries are trying to hijack a U.N. agency that has nothing to do with the Internet.

For more than a year, these countries have lobbied an agency called the International Telecommunications Union to take over the rules and workings of the Internet. Created in 1865 as the International Telegraph Union, the ITU last drafted a treaty on communications in 1988, before the commercial Internet, when telecommunications meant voice telephone calls via national telephone monopolies.

Next week the ITU holds a negotiating conference in Dubai, and past months have brought many leaks of proposals for a new treaty. U.S. congressional resolutions and much of the commentary, including in this column, have focused on proposals by authoritarian governments to censor the Internet. Just as objectionable are proposals that ignore how the Internet works, threatening its smooth and open operations.

Having the Internet rewired by bureaucrats would be like handing a Stradivarius to a gorilla. The Internet is made up of 40,000 networks that interconnect among 425,000 global routes, cheaply and efficiently delivering messages and other digital content among more than two billion people around the world, with some 500,000 new users a day.

...

Google has started an online petition for a "free and open Internet" saying: "Governments alone, working behind closed doors, should not direct its future." The State Department's top delegate to the Dubai conference, Terry Kramer, has pledged that the U.S. won't let the ITU expand its authority to the Internet. But he hedged his warning in a recent presentation in Washington: "We don't want to come across like we're preaching to others."

To the contrary, the top job for the U.S. delegation at the ITU conference is to preach the virtues of the open Internet as forcefully as possible. Billions of online users are counting on America to make sure that their Internet is never handed over to authoritarian governments or to the U.N.

(Full article at the link)

Dont want to come across like we're preaching to others?? It looks Mr. Kramer would rather fit in with the UN crowd. The US has had no problem spreading so-called democracy at gun-point (or by drone bombing) in many places in the world, increasingly so under the current regime. But it shies away from making the point in a peaceful manner. Interesting.

Mr. Crovitz says dictatorial governments like China, Russia, Iran and Arab countries want to control and censor the net. President Obama signed the executive order in July this year "to empower certain governmental agencies with control over telecommunications and the Web during natural disasters and security emergencies" (CNET). I have a feeling that China, Russia, Iran and Arab countries are thinking about the same thing anyway, "natural disasters and security emergencies".

"Proposals for the new ITU treaty run to more than 200 pages", according to the article. I wonder who wrote it.

Here's the link to Google's Take Action page.

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OT: Google Earth, Map Show Australian Island That Does Not Exist

Apple "solved" the Senkaku Islands row between Japan and China by showing two sets of islands, one for Japan and one for China, on iPhone5's ill-fated map (which also showed the USSR in Moscow, and London's Big Ben with different faces showing different times).

Now it's Google's turn to show a mystery island on its Google Earth program.

AFP reports that when Australian scientists went to look for an island that appears in Google Earth, there was no such island, and the ocean at that location is very deep (1,400 meter deep).

Google's response? Oh how dynamic the world is! (As if the island has just recently sank...)

In the age of digitized maps and navigation systems, it almost feels as if the real world should follow what's on the map and not the other way around; when it doesn't the problem is with the world, not the map.

From AFP (11/21/2012):

Aussie scientists un-discover Pacific island

SYDNEY — A South Pacific island identified on Google Earth and world maps does not exist, according to Australian scientists who went searching for the mystery landmass during a geological expedition.

The sizeable phantom island in the Coral Sea is shown as Sandy Island on Google Earth and Google maps and is supposedly midway between Australia and the French-governed New Caledonia.

The Times Atlas of the World appears to identify it as Sable Island. Weather maps used by the Southern Surveyor, an Australian maritime research vessel, also say it exists, according to Dr Maria Seton.

But when the Southern Surveyor, which was tasked with identifying fragments of the Australian continental crust submerged in the Coral Sea, steamed to where it was supposed to be, it was nowhere to be found.

"We wanted to check it out because the navigation charts on board the ship showed a water depth of 1,400 metres (4,620 feet) in that area -- very deep," Seton, from the University of Sydney, told AFP after the 25-day voyage.

"It's on Google Earth and other maps so we went to check and there was no island. We're really puzzled. It's quite bizarre.

"How did it find its way onto the maps? We just don't know, but we plan to follow up and find out."

News of the invisible island sparked debate on social media, with tweeter Charlie Loyd outpointing that Sandy Island is also on Yahoo Maps as well as Bing Maps "but it disappears up close".

On www.abovetopsecret.com, discussions were robust with one poster claiming he had confirmed with the French hydrographic office that it was indeed a phantom island and was supposed to have been removed from charts in 1979.

Another claimed: "Many mapmakers put in deliberate but unobtrusive and non-obvious 'mistakes' into their maps so that they can know when somebody steals the map data."

Google was not immediately available for comment. But the Google Maps product manager for Australia and New Zealand told the Sydney Morning Herald a variety of authoritative public and commercial sources were used in building maps.

"The world is a constantly changing place, and keeping on top of these changes is a never-ending endeavour," Nabil Naghdy told the newspaper.

The closest landmass to the invisible island is the Chesterfields, a French archipelago of uninhabited coral sand cays.

Here's Google Earth screenshot of "Sandy Island". I can understand the map may have the island, but on Google Earth? "Sandy Island" looks like a cut-out hole.

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OT: Apple Unvails iPad Mini, Stock Goes South (For Now)

For $329, you can now buy a small tablet from Apple. For price-conscious consumers, there are Google Nexus or Amazon Kindle for $199. Or Samsung Galaxy.

AAPL intraday price movement, from Yahoo Finance:

After the unveiling of iPad mini, Amazon shot up, and Google wasn't perturbed.

AMZN intraday:

GOOG intraday:

Apple is set to announce its quarterly earnings on Thursday after market.

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OT: Google Map Turns into "Dragon Quest" on April 1st

http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&tab=wl

I still remember the April Fool's Day joke from Google that Google was starting a new phone service that uses toilet sewer pipes. I thought, "That can't be... but..."

It looks like Professor Hayakawa of Gunma University is taking it seriously now, and wondering how a Nintendo machine can use Google Map.

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Google's "Memories for the Future" Project Has Before-and-After Streetviews of Japan's Earthquake/Tsunami Affected Areas

English: http://www.miraikioku.com/streetview/en/

Japanese: http://www.miraikioku.com/streetview/after

People can also contribute the photos and videos, or ask for photos and videos of pre-earthquake/tsunami Japan. The page is only in Japanese: http://www.miraikioku.com/

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OT: SPAM Attack, Google's Filter Freely Lets In SPAM

No, I'm not talking about Finnish trolls or any other familiar "spams" at this blog. All this morning and into the afternoon, people with the Google profiles have been spamming the comment section of the posts. I probably deleted 2 dozen already.

Here's the latest:

Iris H.Maldanado has left a new comment on your post "India's First Fast Breeder Reactor to Go Critical ...":

I was suggested this web site by my cousin. I'm not sure whether this post is written by him as nobody else know such detailed about my trouble. You're amazing! Thanks!
Spectrum Transfertube Combination Dropping Pipets; Volume: 4mL

What's the matter, Google? There's some serious filter failure on your part.

I guess no one is interested in system maintenance at Google.

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OT: Google Homepage "Blackout" in Protest of SOPA and PIPA

Google's pages "End Piracy, Not Lilberty", "More about SOPA and PIPA"

(Well, Google, is this what you get in return for donating heavily to Candidate Obama in 2008 election...? The image is from a Zero Hedge post here.)

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OT: Google Screwed Up Big Time, Removed Posts from May 11

Blogger was not accessible for nearly 20 hours as the result of a big screw-up in maintenance which apparently removed the posts from May 11 for every Blogger user. Everyone in the whole wide world who uses Blogger.

My posts are gone too. Hopefully temporarily.

Even the unpublished drafts are gone. My feed readers are receiving posts from over a week ago.

Google claims it's making progress in restoring the posts, and "back to normal soon", but that tweet was 4 hours ago and they were saying the same 9 hours ago.

Google, meet Microsoft. (Or Adobe. Or [plug in your favorite villain]..)

Now Twitter is having some hiccups. Twitter, meet Google.

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#Japan #Earthquake: Before and After Photos by Google

Asahi Shinbun's website has a page with satellite photos taken by Google that show before and after photos of some of the areas and cities hit by the earthquake of March 11.

Photos were taken by Geo-Eye 1 satellite.

Here's one pair: part of Natori City in Miyagi Prefecture

Before (2008):


After:

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Good for You, Google (and Twitter): speak2tweet

From Official Google Blog:

Some weekend work that will (hopefully) enable more Egyptians to be heard

1/31/2011 02:27:00 PM

Like many people we’ve been glued to the news unfolding in Egypt and thinking of what we could do to help people on the ground. Over the weekend we came up with the idea of a speak-to-tweet service—the ability for anyone to tweet using just a voice connection.

We worked with a small team of engineers from Twitter, Google and SayNow, a company we acquired last week, to make this idea a reality. It’s already live and anyone can tweet by simply leaving a voicemail on one of these international phone numbers (+16504194196 or +390662207294 or +97316199855) and the service will instantly tweet the message using the hashtag #egypt. No Internet connection is required. People can listen to the messages by dialing the same phone numbers or going to twitter.com/speak2tweet.

We hope that this will go some way to helping people in Egypt stay connected at this very difficult time. Our thoughts are with everyone there.

Update Feb 1, 12:47 PM: When possible, we're now detecting the approximate (country-level) geographic origin of each call dialing one of our speak2tweet numbers and attaching a hashtag for that country to each tweet. For example, if a call comes from Switzerland, you'll see #switzerland in the tweet, and if one comes from Egypt you'll see #egypt. For calls when we can't detect the location, we default to an #egypt hashtag.

Posted by Ujjwal Singh, CoFounder of SayNow and AbdelKarim Mardini, Product Manager, Middle East & North Africa

However, I'm starting to believe that Egyptians have come together precisely because the government shut down the Internet. The government shut down much of mobile phone network, though that has come back on. No tweet, no facebook, no cellphone, and people actually started to talk with their neighbors. No proof on this, just my personal take.

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Schmidt: It's Google Policy "to Get Right Up to the Creepy Line"

Google's CEO Eric Schmidt strikes again.

The creepy line? As many in the comment section wonder aloud, just which side of the "creepy line" is Google approaching?

Eric Schmidt: Google gets close to 'the creepy line'
(Shane Richmond, 10/05/2010 Telegraph UK)

"Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google, has described his company’s policy: “Google policy is to get right up to the creepy line and not cross it.”

"Schmidt was talking to The Atlantic about the possibility of a Google implant – a chip under your skin that would track you and provide easy web access. That, Schmidt said, was probably over ‘the creepy line’.

"However, he followed that by saying: “With your permission you give us more information about you, about your friends, and we can improve the quality of our searches. We don’t need you to type at all. We know where you are. We know where you’ve been. We can more or less know what you’re thinking about.”

"Some might argue that that is over the line too but Google will only read your mind “with your permission”, so that’s a relief.

"Schmidt has a history of attention-grabbing and quotable statements about Google’s increasing, err, creep into our lives. There was the time that he said: “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.” Recently he has suggested that young people might in future change their names so as to escape their Google-able past." [The article continues.]

Your "permission" may amount to nothing more than having cookies on your PC.

One of the Google founders, Sergey Brin, said in September that Google wants to be "the third half of your brain".

"Creepiness" is now the culture of Google, actively promoted by the top management. How times have changed.

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Google's Sergey Brin Wants "Third Half" of Our Brain

Huh? It doesn't add up, does it? Or are there the fourth half and fifth half, too? I'm confused.

Sergey Brin: "We Want Google To Be The Third Half Of Your Brain."
(Jay Yarow, 9/8/2010 Business Insider)

"Sergey Brin wants Google to become the "third half of your brain."

"That's what he said at today's big search event, where Google released Google Instant, its fast, streaming search results.

"We're not exactly certain what Brin meant, but we think he was trying to say Google will know what you want in a search, perhaps even before you know." [Emphasis is mine.]

So, the recent comment from Google's CEO Eric Schmidt does indicate the direction that Google is taking. Schmidt said "I actually think most people don't want Google to answer their questions. They want Google to tell them what they should be doing next." (For more, read my post in August.)

I was hoping that the Google founders were somehow different from the CEO and that "Don't be evil" still meant paramount for them. I guess I was naive, after all these years.

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Google Wants to Dictate, I Mean Help With, Your Life, and It's All for Your Own Good

Google went public 6 years ago. How quickly has it become an antithesis of its own creed, "Don't be evil", which by the way Apple's Steve Jobs doesn't think highly of .

UK's Telegraph relates to us what Google has planned for us in the digital future:

Young will have to change names to escape 'cyber past' warns Google's Eric Schmidt (8/18/2010 Telegraph)

"The private lives of young people are now so well documented on the internet that many will have to change their names on reaching adulthood, Google’s CEO has claimed.

"Eric Schmidt suggested that young people should be entitled to change their identity to escape their misspent youth, which is now recorded in excruciating detail on social networking sites such as Facebook.

""I don't believe society understands what happens when everything is available, knowable and recorded by everyone all the time," Mr Schmidt told the Wall Street Journal.

"The 55-year-old also predicted that in the future, Google will know so much about its users that the search engine will be able to help them plan their lives.

"Using profiles of it customers and tracking their locations through their smart phones, it will be able to provide live updates on their surroundings and inform them of tasks they need to do.

""We're trying to figure out what the future of search is," Mr Schmidt said. “One idea is that more and more searches are done on your behalf without you needing to type.

""I actually think most people don't want Google to answer their questions. They want Google to tell them what they should be doing next."

"He suggested, as an example, that because Google would know “roughly who you are, roughly what you care about, roughly who your friends are”, it could remind users what groceries they needed to buy when passing a shop." [Emphasis is mine. The article continues.]

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Amazon Fights for Customers' Privacy and Rights Against N. Carolina Taxmen

Amazon fights demand for customer records
(Declan McCullagh, 4/19/2010 CNET News)

"Amazon.com filed a lawsuit on Monday to fend off a sweeping demand from North Carolina's tax collectors: detailed records including names and addresses of customers and information about exactly what they purchased.

"The lawsuit says the demand violates the privacy and First Amendment rights of Amazon's customers. North Carolina's Department of Revenue had ordered the online retailer to provide full details on nearly 50 million purchases made by state residents between 2003 and 2010.

"Amazon is asking a federal judge in Seattle to rule that the demand is illegal, and left open the possibility of requesting a preliminary injunction against North Carolina's tax collectors.

""The best-case scenario for customers would be where the North Carolina Department of Revenue withdraws their demand because they recognize that it violates the privacy rights of North Carolina residents," Amazon spokesperson Mary Osako told CNET." [The article continues.]

Support Amazon, buy from them. Better yet, buy from Amazon through my blog!

By the way, Google has started to post the number of government requests worldwide for censorship and for turning over the personal information of Google's users, at www.google.com/governmentrequests.

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Battle of Tech Titans: Apple, Google, Amazon

Two weeks ago Google (ticker symbol: GOOG) introduced its high-end smart phone Nexus One, in competition with Apple Inc.'s iPhone.

Now, Apple Inc. (AAPL) is getting ready to introduce its long-rumoured color tablet device, in direct competition with Amazon.com (AMZN)'s Kindle.

Apple, HarperCollins seen in tablet talks
(1/19/2010 San Jose Business Journal)

"Apple Inc. could be getting ready to give Amazon.com and its Kindle significant new competition with the introduction of color and multi-media features for e-books.

"The Cupertino company is in talks with giant publisher HarperCollins Publishers Inc. about bringing such features to its titles on the tablet computing device that is expected to be introduced next week, the Wall Street Journal reported.

"Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) has yet to officially confirm that a tablet exists but invited the press to an event in San Francisco next week to "Come see our latest creation."" (The article continues.)

What is the big deal about companies offering competing products, you ask? That's the way it is for almost all industries. But I don't think that happened before among Nasdaq high-beta tech companies with high PE ratio like Apple, Google, and Amazon.

In the past, they tended to stay out of each other's turf, so to speak.

Google's phone has so far received a mixed review from the users, who complain about poor service and poor connectivity. But so did Apple's iPhone when it was first introduced, along with some incredulous scream from analysts "A cell phone? What is Steve Jobs thinking?? Apple had better stick to its core business (i.e. making computers)."

When Amazon's Jeff Bezos first introduced Kindle, he was roundly ridiculed. "E-book? We know how the previous attempts turned out." In the last quarter, Amazon announced that it sold more books for Kindle than the physical books.

Now Google wants to take a bite out of Apple, and Apple out of Amazon.

(Where are the erstwhile gadget makers of the world, the Japanese? Sony? Casio?)

Judging solely by how the shares of these companies are behaving today, the perceived winner so far seems to be Apple, up $6.54 to $212 (10:50 AM EST). Google is up $1.66 to $581.66, Amazon down $1.24 to $125.88.

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More on 'Googlegate' and 'Climategate'

I knew something didn't smell right with the article by Lawrence Solomon (my yesterday's post).

Here's a better searched article on the issue by Danny Sullivan in December 2009, which I got from a LRC Blog post by Walter Block:

Of Climategate, Googlegate & When Stories Got Too Long
(12/1/2009, Search Engine Land)

Reading the article, I know now that:

1. It all started with U.K. Telegraph's James Delingpole when he found out that his colleague's article on 'climategate' disappeared from Google. Lawrence Solomon's article didn't even mention any of that.

2. If you search with +climategate to eliminate possible synonyms and alternative spellings, the result is different (see below for more).

3. The particular article by Delingpole's colleague got too long (1.3MB in HTML in December - that's huge for HTML) because of the rapidly expanding comment section that it was automatically dropped from Google News.

4. U.K. Telegraph had attacked Google in the past for showing its stories.

5. If you type the article title in Google regular search, it does show up.

6. As to 'climategate' not suggested with Google Suggest, it may be that, if not enough people are searching the term on that particular day or hour, Google Suggest doesn't suggest 'climategate' when you type in 'cli' or 'clima' or whatever. (Or it may be more personal; if you don't search that term often enough, Google Search won't suggest. More later.)

Now, let us try the qualified search +climategate (the entire word) on Google and Microsoft's Bing, and Yahoo and compare the results:

Google: 9,270,000
Bing: 286,000
Yahoo: 21,900,000

Or using the exact phrase search "climategate":

Google: 9,270,000
Bing: 57,400,000
Yahoo: 6,520,000

The winner, if just look at the search result numbers, is actually Google. Exact phrase or the entire word as is, in this case, shouldn't make any difference.

The articles that come to the top today:

Google: (top) Climatic Research Unit hacking incident - wikipedia; (2nd) Climategate: the final nail in the coffin.. - Telegraph U.K.
Bing: (top) Climategate Document Database; (2nd) Climategate: the final nail in the coffin... - Telegraph U.K.
Yahoo: (top) Climategate| Anthropogenic Global Warming, history's .... (2nd) Climatic Research Unit hacking incident - wikipedia

As to Bing's high number (57 million) when you search with "climategate", my guess is that the search engine picks up any article, any site out there that contains "climate" and/or "gate", whereas Google may pick up only "climategate" the scandal. Who knows. I don't. As I said in my previous post, I don't use Bing for my daily search.

Top 3 search suggestions that come up when I type "cli" today:

Google: clip art, cliff note, climategate
Bing: clintonbushhaitifund.org, clip art, clint eastwood (now that's funny)
Yahoo: clip art, kim clijsters, clinique

Top 3 search suggeestions that come up when I type "clim" today:

Google: climategate, climate change, climate
Bing: climbing gyms, climategate, climate change
Yahoo: clima, climate change, climb

So much for Solomon's article that I posted yesterday, which now looks to me like a rather uninformed smear piece on Google. His conclusion, "The bottom line? Google is as inscrutable as the Chinese, and perhaps no less corrupt. For safe searches, you’re best off with Bing", is simply absurd. There is no bottom line here, but his own flimsy conclusion from cursory observation or from emails from his readers. I am happy to know Mr. Solomon finds Bing excellent for his search, but no thank you, not for me.

How he can say Microsoft's Bing is safe, I have no idea. If the search engine is safe because it returns all the results that contains 'climate' or 'gate or both when you look up 'climategate', I have to infer that "safe" means "useless".

And shame on me for not researching further first.

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