When Google Doesn't Meet Your Religious Standards

Last updated on: September 16, 2010 at 11:00 am by Jason Morehead

When Google Doesn't Meet Your Religious Standards 2010-09-16T11:00:22-06:00 Jason Morehead

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Surfers who are concerned about being potentially morally and spiritually contaminated by Google’s search results now have some “holier” alternatives. NPR recently wrote about several alternative search engines that cater to specific religious groups:

In a world where Google has put every bit of information at our fingertips, some people are now demanding less information when they surf the Internet.

Some Jews, Muslims and Christians are abandoning Yahoo and Google and turning to search engines with results that meet their religious standards.

Shea Houdmann runs SeekFind, a Colorado Springs-based Christian search engine that only returns results from websites that are consistent with the Bible. He says SeekFind is designed “to promote what we believe to be biblical truth” and excludes sites that don’t meet that standard.

Houdmann says a search on his site would not turn up pornography. If you search “gay marriage,” you would get results that argue against gay marriage. And if you type in “Democratic Party,” your first search result is a site on Marxism.

Religious alternatives to search engines like Google are, of course, not unique when it comes to religion-friendly websites and web applications, nor are they new.

Conservapedia, a conservative alternative to Wikipedia that made headlines last year when they announced the “Conservative Bible Project”, launched in November 2006. Christian Chirp, a Christian alternative to Twitter, has been around since November 2009. And finally, GodTube (now part of Tangle.com) — “a video sharing platform offering online Christian videos with faith-based, family friendly content” — launched in 2007. And those are just Christian alternatives.

Earlier in 2010, Pakistani developers launched MillatFacebook, a Muslim alternative to Facebook, to protest Facebook’s refusal to remove a page advocating “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day”.

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