Yes, Google Uses Its Power to Quash Ideas It Doesnt LikeI Know Because It Happened to Me UpdatedThe 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 tanks website applauding the European Commissions 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 Lynns 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 Googles monopolistic practices after the company got upset about it. In my case, the post stayed unpublished. 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 Googles then new social network, Plus. The Google salespeople were encouraging Forbes to add Pluss 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 resultsa crucial source of traffic to publishers. This sounded like a news story to me. Googles 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. I asked the Google people if I understood correctly If a publisher didnt put a 1 button on the page, its search results would sufferThe answer was yes. After the meeting, I approached Googles public relations team as a reporter, told them Id been in the meeting, and asked if I understood correctly. Are you in Sign up for the For The Win daily email newsletter for the top stories every day. Yes Send me the For The Win Daily Newsletter. Steve Jobs was legendary for knowing what he wanted and leaning on his designers until he got it. But according to a new book on the history of the iPhone, he. From Henry Ford and Thomas Watson to Steve Jobs and Elon Musk, a look back at the debuts of some of the greatest business minds in Forbes. Its cake versus ice cream for Splatoon 2s first Splatfest and were streaming all the fun live on our Twitch channel. Come and join the mayhem 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. LGBT community not amused after founder of Noahs Ark Biblical theme park says that Christians need to take back the rainbow Ken Ham runs the Answers in Genesis. Watch Dogs 2 got its final patch today, which makes impossible to use mods while online if youre playing on PC. The games publisher, Ubisoft, says that this is. The press office confirmed it, though they preferred to say the Plus button influences the ranking. They didnt deny what their sales people told me If you dont feature the 1 button, your stories will be harder to find with Google. Watch Crazy About Tiffany`S Online Hulu on this page. 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 doesnt put 1 buttons on its pages, it will suffer in search rankings I asked. Google guy says he wouldnt 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, hadnt 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 didnt 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. Qatar is a tiny, obscenely wealthy countryU. S. military base in the Persian Gulf that has, justifiably so, become synonymous of late with dynastic oligarchism. The latest travel information, deals, guides and reviews from USA TODAY Travel. The Hollywood Reporter is your source for breaking news about Hollywood and entertainment, including movies, TV, reviews and industry blogs. Given that Id 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 downa 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 itand although it has been six years, this episode was seared into my memorya cached version remained shortly after the post was unpublished, but it was soon scrubbed from Google search results. That was unusual websites captured by Googles 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. Its 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 doesnt like would be an extraordinary, almost dystopian abuse of the companys power over information on the internet. I dont have any hard evidence to prove that thats what Google did in this instance, but its part of why this episode has haunted me for years The story Google didnt want people to read swiftly became impossible to find through Google. Google wouldnt 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 pieces disappearance and wroteaboutit, wondering why it disappeared. Those pieces, at least, are still findable today. As for how effective the strategy was, Googles dominance in other industries didnt 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 its 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 doesnt 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, theyve launched a website called Citizens Against Monopoly that tells their story. It says that Googles attempts to shut down think tanks, journalists, and public interest advocates researching and writing about the dangers of concentrated private power must end. Its safe to say they wont be receiving funding from Google. Update, September 1, 1 5. Yesterday, we asked Googles communications team for a response to this story.