Jeffrey Rosen has an interesting article in the NYT Magazine asking "Are Google’s gatekeepers determining the limits of free speech?" He looks at various cases where Google decided how to respond to demands that it blocks access to material, most notably on YouTube.
On the balance that Google seeks to strike, he quotes Tim Wu, a Columbia law professor and a former scholar in residence at Google:
“To love Google, you have to be a little bit of a monarchist, you have to have faith in the way people traditionally felt about the king. One reason they’re good at the moment is they live and die on trust, and as soon as you lose trust in Google, it’s over for them.” Google’s claim on our trust is a fragile thing. After all, it’s hard to be a company whose mission is to give people all the information they want and to insist at the same time on deciding what information they get.
