racoma.com.phJ. Angelo Racoma on technology, economics, writing, problogging, and getting things done

Activists are now bringing their fight to the Internet.  Young Radicals,
a blog featuring “radical youth’s views, activities, debate, ideas,
reviews and literary works” called for a Google Bomb featuring the
profiles of some of Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s cabinet officials as sinungaling
(liar), sira ulo (crazy), and bugaw (pimp).  This is pretty much similar to the Google Bombing of U.S. President George Bush as “miserable failure.”

The group has likwise succeeded in directing queries for “pekeng pangulo” (or fake president) to President Arroyo’s personal website.

You can try it yourself.  Key in “sinungaling” on Google, and the first result is Office of the President Website – The Cabinet – Ignacio “Toting” Bunye. Key in “miserable failure” (even without the quotes), and you get Biography of President George W. Bush.  And of course, there’s the query for “pekeng pangulo” which directs users to President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s Website.

The Administration has found a way to make it seem that the Google
bombing backfired by redirecting readers referred by Google to the
Young radicals blog.  So a user who clicks on the first Google
result (or clicks “I’m feeling lucky” instead of “search”) will think
that the top result for sinungaling or liar is actually the Young Radicals page.  Inq7.net even reported about this in an article entitled “Google Bombing on Arroyo Officials backfire”.   Check out Migs Paraz’s post about the incident on Pinoy.tech.blog.

When the user clicks, he is sent to the Young Radicals page, apparently
by Google. But is actually the Office of the President’s web server
that was set up to do it. It checks if the user was sent by Google
using the Referrer header. (Mispelled as “Referer”).

But the Young Radicals site claims that the battle hasn’t been actually won by the Arroyo Camp.

Apparently, the government’s set of computer experts and
its rich resources were no match to the overwhelming anti-Arroyo
sentiment now engulfing the country and the internet.

True, the Google bombing incident is now talk of the Pinoy blogosphere
and techie and political e-groups (at least those I’m part of). 
And when the blogosphere talks, there’s no stopping what can be said or
done.  The best way for the Administration to combat these attacks
is not to resort to their own cyber warfare tactics.

IMHO, it’s best to be part of the discussion themselves.

There is a pseudo-President Arroyo blog over at kgma.wordpress.com.  I think it’s high time for President Arroyo to set up a real blog of her own.

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