April 2, 2008
Google turns a blind eye to under-age searching
Drinking, gambling and… searching?
It seems the list of proscribed activities for the younger set is longer than you thought. A sharp-eyed blogger at CNET spotted last week that Google’s official terms of service explicitly bar anyone under the age of 18 from using any of its services. That’s right: no hanging out on Orkut, no peeping at YouTube, and definitely no searching for someone else’s homework to cut and paste.
So it’s a relief to hear that Google’s lawyers have finally decided to loosen up a bit. From a response just in:
The language regarding the age restriction is an acknowledgment by Google that, in most jurisdictions, an agreement with a minor may not be legally enforceable. Google intends to modify its terms of service to clarify that users under the age of 18 are welcome to use Google’s services, subject to certain limitations based on each specific service.
Get back to it, kids.
Google is smart! Try the search with a keyword jj (I mistyped it while looking for sthg else) and look at the first “suprising” results from image search.
Doesn’t it make sense to have the 18+ disclosure now?
Posted by: Indus Khaitan | April 3rd, 2008 at 7:22 am | Report this commentvery interesting
Posted by: Kristina | April 4th, 2008 at 6:33 pm | Report this commentAs a future teacher the content that Google returns is a major issue that I will have to deal with. I am fully aware of some of the awful things that you can accidentally come across when trying to search an educational topic. For instance if a student needed to write a paper on the Greek god Aphrodite, and decided to use Google images to find a picture, then I feel sorry for the poor child who would no doubt come across very adult content. Does Google have a search engine based for younger children? And if not I think that would be a very good step for them to take.
Posted by: justin_m | April 5th, 2008 at 12:25 am | Report this comment