CatholicGoogle, a new site based on Google’s custom search, is “striving to provide an easy to use resource to anyone wanting to learn more about Catholicism and provide a safer way for good Catholics to surf the web.” The site uses a permanently-on Google SafeSearch to filter out profanity and pornography, along with a filter for specific topics that floats Catholic-related sites to the top. For example, a search for “birth control” serves up pages on why birth control is viewed as a sin in the Catholic Church as its first results.
The search engine might appeal to some devout Catholics if it actually worked. However, it seems that when it comes to filtering topics beyond the standard “offensive” categories (swear words and sex) , CatholicGoogle only serves to make queries potentially more offensive. A search for “drunk” yields a video of “Drunk Catholic Kids”. Perhaps even more bizarre: a search for “sex” offers an article bashing the Church’s stance on sexuality (they may have included this in the results for a balanced alternative perspective, but I doubt it). It’s as if the site just appends the word “Catholic” to whatever you’re searching for and crosses its fingers.
If this is your sort of thing, you might also be interested in GodTube, the YouTube for Christians or Gospelr (you guessed it – the Twitter for Christians).
let the lawsuits begin.
Yeah, no doubt. Trademark dilution anyone?
Why would TC even post this joker?
Maybe to accelerate the lawsuit?
The pope’s gonna be irked.
If this is owned and operated by an individual for non-commercial purposes, then there wouldn’t be a problem. There wouldn’t be any trademark dilution either.
thou shalt not segregate. segregation is the root of discrimination.
@Mike: yeah, google would still have a problem. cf gmailharddrive.com, which had to change its name to xmailharddrive.com. was non-commercial.
I mean, jeez, if they don’t have a problem then I’m registering googlesearch.com, google4business.com, shopgoogle.com, auctiongoogle.com and a billion other domains like right now!
(disclaimer, no I haven’t checked if those are available, no I don’t really care)
A search engine that appends the word “Catholic” to your search? There really is no good way of determining what stupid thing TechCrunch will cover next.
This appears to be a parody of Google, instead of a real service. By the way, parody is the only defense I can think of when Google mails that C&D letter.
Unfortunately, I agree with J. I love TechCrunch. It’s a daily read for sure. But, this is neither interesting nor relevant – sorry.
and the weekly Yahoo bashing is reliant???? New to the site? Here, have a taco on the way out…
I concur. I concur.
it’s great to see the christians wanting to live in a bubble.
It means they fall harder and onto my lap
Sadly, it isn’t just Christians living in their own little bubble of illusions.
Jon
http://buzvia.com – Where’s Your Traffic Going?
I’m going to disagree with J and Smock. While I think the idea is silly at best (and will probably be short-lived), there is no problem with writing about it. It may be uninteresting and irrelevant to you, but don’t write it off as such for everyone else.
The truth is that there are hundreds of thousands (millions?…) of websites out there, and TechCrunch can’t cover them all…it would be difficult to argue with a straight face that this site has any business toward the top of that list. The site creators must know a guy who knows a guy…
My name starts with a C. People at the office are always asking me programming related questions. So as a joke, I created something similar using Yahoo BOSS and called it Coogle.
Then, I changed it to BitCircle.com.
Now, I think I’m going to change direction…search is dead for people like me. :^) lol
I do agree with other, this does appear to be a parody of Google.
What’s next??? Jewoogle?
That would rock! A dating search engine for jewgars
That already exists:
http://www.ichikoo.com/joogle/
Sounds like an idea. There definitely is a market for it.
I’m surprised no one else mentioned this before, but I would think it would get a huge amount of joke searches.
I’m only a little ashamed to admit that the very first thing I typed in was “anal sex.” The first result (the SEO “G” spot” was “Is anal sex pleasurable for women?”
All I can say is their targeted ad campaigns are going to be really weird.
This just pisses me off, not interests me.
Site will be taken down in less than a week. Putting Google in name of a site is so stupid. I can’t believe TC is giving them attention.
I’m Catholic, and I think that’s just a ridiculous idea. Why do other religious people always feel the need to SHIELD themselves from the rest of the world? The point is precisely the opposite!
I can actually see the need for a Mahalo-like website search/wikipedia/answers like portal/website that is not just for Catholics but for those who are curious and want to know more about Catholicism, instead of simply filtering out sex and, as you eloquently put it, adding “catholic” to every search and crossing your fingers.
Maybe they had good intentions. The way I understand it, if you’re going to call a website “Catholic” you wouldn’t be working (on your own) in isolation, you would have the Church behind it.
For example, I believe the social network Xt3.com was created with Church guidance, but other social networks like 4marks.com are “Catholic” in name only, these are private businesses with their own independent goals.
Yeah I am surprised you are reporting on this site. It violates too many legalities.
I find it funny. I did a simple search for “birth control.” Google returns plannedparenthood.org first, while CatholicGoogle returns catholic.com. I don’t mind the site, I just don’t want to see Google in the name.
Visit also http://www.mygodsearch.com/ for religious search
Using the Name Catholic Google search it must have to filter the pornography content ,to stand by its name.
Shame on TC for reporting this piece of shit!
Another one of the crap stories that I have read this week. TC is surely loosing it. Why can’t they report something that does not involve Google or Apple. Maybe the guys at TC know the guys at goog or AAPL.
I don’t think it’s the relevance of subject matter that’s at fault ( although it did wind me up a little ).
If eBizWebpages, who knocked this little number up, had done anything innovative or creative then fair enough but the application is of absolutely no merit.
I mean they didn’t even host it on appengine so in order to leverage the Google user accounts.
It’s just armature!
It took me less than an hour to build this off the same “Google custom search” infrastructure
http://atheists...ch.appspot.com/
( strangely enough “atheistgoogle.appspot.com” has already been registered ! )
My website will server Christians better than this one (IMHO
. Also the trademark violation with this Catholic site will not go unnoticed by Google.
http://www.GodlySearch.com
I should have submitted this for review here but never thought of it. My bad!
Sean
The best part is that the ads don’t appear to be censored – in many cases. Some are definitely borderline. Agreed, custom search sites aren’t exactly revolutionary and thus I don’t really expect to see them written about here, unless they’re making a boatload of money, which is doubtful in this case.
gotta love the logo.
wow.
I happen to like the idea. Google offers customized Twitter Groups, and I’m pretty sure it offers a customizable Google search? Would you have the same reaction if there was a customized Google search for vegans?
In my humble opinion, the author of this post has a problem with Christianity more so than he does with the fact that there is a customized Google Search site.
I can understand people getting upset, because it could give some Google juice to Catholic sites that normally would be on the 16th page of a search result. I would accept this as a valid argument.
For there to be a lawsuit against the Catholic Church over something like this would be silly. For the very reason that the church is made up of many Christians. This site is not funded by the Vatican. The people that have a problem with a customized Google search that is catered towards Catholics, have a bigger problem with the fact that Christians are using technology to serve a Higher Power. Namely Jesus Christ.
Get over it people, the customized search wasn’t created for you!
Hey Jason,
Thank you for taking the time to post a response to my blogpost. After re-reading your blogpost, I realized that my comments were more directed to the other commenters than to you directly.
Apologies.
Catholic sex abuse cases – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Roman Catholics spent $615 million dollars on sex abuse cases in 2007. The American Catholic Church has paid out $2 billion in abuse costs since 1950. …
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Catholic_sex_abuse_cases
why do they have to make everything religious…
I guess it would have been also worth if you could cover http://www.gummah.com a search engine for muslims.
I was actually thinking about this last week. There needs to be a family-branded search engine/portal for kids under 18. Families and schools can effectively ban google if they are afraid of adult content, but a Family Branded portal with adult blocker can gain traction among families and schools. I think Yahoo should do this.
Check out KidZui
It’s great
not news
I won’t argue about the relevance or quality of this article from TC. But as long as we’re on the subject, I wanted to point out the Google Custom Search Engine is an incredibly useful tool for church organizations.
In the Presbyterian Church in Canada, for example, our online community is spread over several hundred websites. The denominational website (at 3000+ pages) only scratches the surface of information about our work and faith.
To address this, we recently replaced the interal site search at Presbyterian.ca with a Google CSE that limits the search to the several hundred known Presbyterian community websites.
The results are extremely relevant – and the ‘refinements’ feature makes it even more so!
Just a tad-bit ridiculous (or rather largely ridiculous). Although these people are pretty serious about the “dangers of the internet.”
I was just recently attending a baptism, and the priest made the families promise that they will protect their children from the “evils of this world” such as “drugs, alcohol, and the internet” !!!
Find the one that’s out of place in the three above.
- http://www.CouponsCatalog.com
Lol good one TechCrunch! Try searching for the word “sex” like I did at http://www.occi...2007.com/?p=599 and see what turns up. Hillarious I tell ya.
It’s sad that whenever something religious is posted anywhere, people start swearing.
Why not have a natural viewpoint about what other people believe and respect their choice?
I’m definitely not a Christian, but that doesn’t mean nobody else should.
Really, I’ve observed this on many sites, including Digg and the like. Spiritual / Religious topics always attract a lot of negative comments.
I say “live and let live!”
Hi,
I am the owner and creator of TheCatholicSearch.com, which has been around for a few years now. The way our site works is we only give search results from sites that have been submitted by our users and reviewed for Catholic content. The idea came to me during my RCIA classes. I received a list of sites to study and I decided that a “Catholic Search Engine” that only searched these sites would be useful. It kind of grew from there.
I also should mention that the other site that you mentioned will probably get into trouble with Google. Originally TheCatholicSearch.com had a “googlish” logo and other “googlish” features. Google did not like it and shut us down for a bit until we sorted it out and changed our logo design.
Thanks, Jereme
CatholicGoogle, or CATHOOGLE as it is now called (great new name!) is a great site and does not have all the advertising all over it like the site mentioned above.
It’s a refreshing new way of surfing the web without all the cr*p.
“Live and let live”