Blog no evil

An article about Google's decision to insist that blogs that host adult content are by invitation only has garnered Zoe Margolis (aka Girl With A One-Track Mind) a bit of criticism - unfairly so, I'd say. Most commenters are missing the point somewhat. Yes, other blogging platforms are available, and yes, if you want to have complete control over what you post, then you can pay for hosting rather than using a free service. But Zoe's central point is that, at best, Google's decision to start censoring and killing off some blogs (by making them practically inaccessible and thereby starving them of readers) sits extremely uneasily with the company's general ethos of facilitating real and virtual interconnections between people, and, at worst, it indicates a significant volte-face as regards that ethos as a whole. Of course, that's not to mention the slightly sinister fact that multinational companies seem to be trying to establish themselves as the police of the internet.