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Yes, Google Uses Its Power to Quash Ideas It Doesn’t Like—I Know Because It Happened to Me [Updated]The story in the New York Times this week was unsettling: The New America Foundation, a major think tank, was getting rid of one of its teams of scholars, the Open Markets group. New America had warned its leader Barry Lynn that he was “imperiling the institution,” the Times reported, after he and his group had repeatedly criticized Google, a major funder of the think tank, for its market dominance. The criticism of Google had culminated in Lynn posting a statement to the think tank’s website “applauding” the European Commission’s decision to slap the company with a record- breaking $2. That post was briefly taken down, then republished.

Soon afterward, Anne- Marie Slaughter, the head of New America, told Lynn that his group had to leave the foundation for failing to abide by “institutional norms of transparency and collegiality.”Google denied any role in Lynn’s firing, and Slaughter tweeted that the “facts are largely right, but quotes are taken way out of context and interpretation is wrong.” Despite the conflicting story lines, the underlying premise felt familiar to me: Six years ago, I was pressured to unpublish a critical piece about Google’s monopolistic practices after the company got upset about it. In my case, the post stayed unpublished. Watch Battle Los Angeles Download here.

I was working for Forbes at the time, and was new to my job. In addition to writing and reporting, I helped run social media there, so I got pulled into a meeting with Google salespeople about Google’s then- new social network, Plus. The Google salespeople were encouraging Forbes to add Plus’s “+1" social buttons to articles on the site, alongside the Facebook Like button and the Reddit share button. They said it was important to do because the Plus recommendations would be a factor in search results—a crucial source of traffic to publishers. This sounded like a news story to me. Google’s dominance in search and news give 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.

Amy Schumer becomes the only woman to make Forbes' 2017 list of the world's highest-paid comedians with an estimated $37.5m annual income. By Rebecca Davison for.

I asked the Google people if I understood correctly: If a publisher didn’t put a +1 button on the page, its search results would suffer? The answer was yes. After the meeting, I approached Google’s public relations team as a reporter, told them I’d been in the meeting, and asked if I understood correctly. The press office confirmed it, though they preferred to say the Plus button “influences the ranking.” They didn’t deny what their sales people told me: If you don’t feature the +1 button, your stories will be harder to find with Google. With that, I published a story headlined, “Stick Google Plus Buttons On Your Pages, Or Your Search Traffic Suffers,” that included bits of conversation from the meeting. The Google guys explained how the new recommendation system will be a factor in search.

Universally, or just among Google Plus friends?” I asked. Universal’ was the answer. So if Forbes doesn’t put +1 buttons on its pages, it will suffer in search rankings?” I asked.

Google guy says he wouldn’t phrase it that way, but basically yes.(An internet marketing group scraped the story after it was published and a version can still be found here.)Google promptly flipped out. This was in 2. 01. Google never challenged the accuracy of the reporting. Instead, a Google spokesperson told me that I needed to unpublish the story because the meeting had been confidential, and the information discussed there had been subject to a non- disclosure agreement between Google and Forbes. I had signed no such agreement, hadn’t been told the meeting was confidential, and had identified myself as a journalist.) It escalated quickly from there. I was told by my higher- ups at Forbes that Google representatives called them saying that the article was problematic and had to come down. The implication was that it might have consequences for Forbes, a troubling possibility given how much traffic came through Google searches and Google News.

I thought it was an important story, but I didn’t want to cause problems for my employer. And if the other participants in the meeting had in fact been covered by an NDA, I could understand why Google would object to the story.

Given that I’d gone to the Google PR team before publishing, and it was already out in the world, I felt it made more sense to keep the story up. Ultimately, though, after continued pressure from my bosses, I took the piece down—a decision I will always regret. Forbes declined comment about this. But the most disturbing part of the experience was what came next: Somehow, very quickly, search results stopped showing the original story at all. As I recall it—and although it has been six years, this episode was seared into my memory—a cached version remained shortly after the post was unpublished, but it was soon scrubbed from Google search results. That was unusual; websites captured by Google’s crawler did not tend to vanish that quickly.

And unpublished stories still tend to show up in search results as a headline. Scraped versions could still be found, but the traces of my original story vanished. It’s possible that Forbes, and not Google, was responsible for scrubbing the cache, but I frankly doubt that anyone at Forbes had the technical know- how to do it, as other articles deleted from the site tend to remain available through Google.

Deliberately manipulating search results to eliminate references to a story that Google doesn’t like would be an extraordinary, almost dystopian abuse of the company’s power over information on the internet. I don’t have any hard evidence to prove that that’s what Google did in this instance, but it’s part of why this episode has haunted me for years: The story Google didn’t want people to read swiftly became impossible to find through Google.

Google wouldn’t address whether it deliberately deep- sixed search results related to the story. Asked to comment, a Google spokesperson sent a statement saying that Forbes removed the story because it was “not reported responsibly,” an apparent reference to the claim that the meeting was covered by a non- disclosure agreement. Again, I identified myself as a journalist and signed no such agreement before attending.

People who paid close attention to the search industry noticed the piece’s disappearance and wroteaboutit, wondering why it disappeared. Those pieces, at least, are still findable today. As for how effective the strategy was, Google’s dominance in other industries didn’t really pan out for Plus.

Six years later, the social network is a ghost town and Google has basically given up on it. But back when Google still thought it could compete with Facebook on social, it was willing to play hardball to promote the network.

Google started out as a company dedicated to ensuring the best access to information possible, but as it’s grown into one of the largest and most profitable companies in the world, its priorities have changed. Even as it fights against ordinary people who want their personal histories removed from the web, the company has an incentive to suppress information about itself. Google said it never urged New America to fire Lynn and his team. But an entity as powerful as Google doesn’t have to issue ultimatums.

It can just nudge organizations and get them to act as it wants, given the influence it wields. Lynn and the rest of the team that left New America Foundation plan to establish a new nonprofit to continue their work. For now, they’ve launched a website called “Citizens Against Monopoly” that tells their story. It says that “Google’s attempts to shut down think tanks, journalists, and public interest advocates researching and writing about the dangers of concentrated private power must end.”It’s safe to say they won’t be receiving funding from Google. Update, September 1, 1: 5. Yesterday, we asked Google’s communications team for a response to this story.

Eero's Latest Router Is So Easy I Don't Care How Much It Costs. Let me make one thing brutally clear: I love Eero’s wi- fi routers. I love how the company brought mesh networking into the mainstream. I love how the hardware’s designed. I love how elegant the software is. But Eero’s promise isn’t new any more.

So when it came time to test out the company second- generation tech, I wanted one thing. I wanted Eero to impress me again. What is it? A mesh router with style. No Like. It's not a good fit for apartment living. It did. Now in its second year on the market, the Eero router’s promise hinges on the idea that wi- fi routers should look great, work even better, and generally make your life connecting to the internet easier.

Accordingly, the company’s sophomore product is a lot like the original but with some subtle upgrades that make the whole concept feel more grown up. The basic Eero Gateway is still the star of the show. This piece of hardware looks almost exactly like the original Eero routers: square, white, svelte. The new Eero flagship boasts a tri- band wi- fi radio that offers three networks—2. GHz, a 5. 2. Ghz, and a 5. GHz—simultaneously. This effectively means you can run high bandwidth applications on two separate networks in the 5.

GHz range without interfering with devices that have more basic needs. Those can talk to the 2. Ghz network. The older Eero routers only offered the 2.

HGz and a single 5. GHz radio. But in human speak, the new Eero Gateway is a workhorse with bigger muscles than its predecessor. What really thrilled me, however, was Eero’s new form factor that lets you expand your home wi- fi network without cords. They’re called Beacons.

The new Eero Beacons are half the size of a Gateway, and they plug directly into the wall, like a night light. In fact, they double as night lights, a feature that seems gimmicky until you stumble to the bathroom at 3am and realize that a next- generation wi- fi router is keeping you from tripping over the pair of shoes you forgot you’d left in the hallway.

The Beacons aren’t quite as powerful as the Gateway; they’re still packing dual- band wi- fi antennas that more closely resemble the original Eero routers. However, this won’t really matter as long as you keep your bandwidth hogs in a central location near an Eero Gateway, where they can best access the strongest wi- fi signal. Watch Ticket Out Online Earnthenecklace on this page. You also have the option of using only Eero Gateways, but that setup is more expensive and wire- tangled than the new Beacon approach. All this means is that your Eero Gateway should be close to your TV, set- top box, gaming console, and VR rig (LOL).

Those are the kinds of gadgets that will require the most bandwidth. You won’t even notice the difference in speed if you’re just streaming music or surfing the web from other corners of your house. If you need to hardwire any of your devices, the Gateway also includes two ethernet ports alongside a USB- C port that powers the device. The Beacons, on the other hard, don’t have any ports. So let’s talk about speed.

I tested the second generation Eero against three different routers: the Fios Quantum Gateway (Verizon Fios’s standard high- speed rental), and the Google Wifi (a cheaper mesh networking system). I conducted the tests using LAN Speed Test, which gives you a nice idea of the theoretical max speed for a router when it isn’t having to deal with slowdowns from your modem or ISP (in the US your router’s theoretical max speed will always be way higher than whatever the ISP provides). All three routers were pretty damn close, with the Verizon rental inching past the mesh routers. You should bear in mind that these speed tests all took place a few feet away from the Eero Gateway or respective router. When you venture many yards away, where the Beacons take over, speeds drop a lot. Then again, you shouldn’t count on using Beacons for heavy- lifting.

Let me be clear again: speed isn’t my favorite thing about the new Eero routers. As someone who never plays video games, streams lots of music and movies, and gets bullied into at least one video chat per month, I don’t really notice a difference. What I do love is a good user experience. Wi- fi routers are historically awful, in part, because for years, interfaces were designed for network technicians and not for the average consumer.

Eero was one of the first companies to focus on making wi- fi routers easy to use, and its second generation of routers doubles down on that promise. It took me roughly 6. Eero system. I downloaded an app, plugged in the Gateway, picked a password, and connected to the internet faster than it takes a Radiohead song to find the chorus.

Setting up the Beacons was even easier. The app told me to plug one in, and a few seconds later it was live, extending my network and giving me a brand new night light. Seriously, I love the night light feature.) Changing the network name or password is equally easy. Instead of logging in to some weird web portal that looks like a malware farm, I just open the app, tap through two menus, and update the settings.

The ease of use is not a new feature to the Eero. However, with the second generation of devices, the company also launched a new program called Eero Plus. For $1. 0 a month, you get some extra security features that promise to prevent you from visiting sites with malware or potential phishing scams. You also get a little more control over user profiles and what kinds of content the related devices can access. Put simply, you can prevent junior’s laptop from downloading porn. Eero Plus also lets you skip the line, when you call the support line with questions.

After enrolling in the free trial, it took me less than an hour to realize that I didn’t need any of the Eero Plus features. I feel generally capable of avoiding dangerous websites on my own. I don’t have kids. And frankly, the Eero system is such a cinch to use, I don’t anticipate calling the support line very often.

Plus, the updated Eero wi- fi system is expensive enough. One Gateway and one Beacon, the cheapest option, will set you back $3.

Adding another Beacon to that package brings the price tag up to $4. The “pro package” includes three Gateways (zero Beacons) and costs $5. So I’m going to go out on a limb here, and say that the Eero system is designed for people with money to spend who don’t want to tinker with their wi- fi. The ideal Eero customer probably lives in a large house full of Crate and Barrel furniture—actually, CB2 is more likely—and likes to buy the newest i.

Phone as soon as it comes out. This hypothetical person might own a shirt or two from Everlane, probably drives a Volvo, and enjoys the occasional craft cocktail. Full disclosure: I’m one of these people. Except for the house and money part.

I live in tiny apartment in Brooklyn, where Eero’s mesh networking technology actually makes little sense. I’m also a blogger. So, even though I’m a big fan of the gadget, I probably wouldn’t even drop $3. Eero set up. I know people who live in big houses, own Eero systems, and can’t imagine life without them. But if you live in a home that’s less than 1,0.

Eero system either. You might want it, though. Good wi- fi technology should be invisible. You should set it up, connect your devices, and then forget that it’s even there because everything works like magic. You can tell from the new Eero’s design that the company is making great progress towards this idea. Unlike your current wi- fi router—which is probably a hideous nest of wires and antennas—the Eero Beacons sort of disappear into the text of your wall.

The Gateway, shiny and white, looks like it could be a nice sculpture you put on your shelf. As such, you might want to spend a little extra dough on an Eero just to own the best version of a useful gadget and love it. If you’re familiar with the Apple tax, this idea should make sense to you. All that said, if I moved into a bigger place next month, I actually would buy the Eero system.