June 5, 2014

It Turns Out That Lots of People Don’t Like What Google Says About Them

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Today we learn the consequences of the recent European court ruling that people can petition Google to remove search results they don’t happen to like:

Google Inc. said Tuesday that it had received 41,000 requests from people hoping to delete individual results that turn up for their name in the first four days after it posted a Web page to take the requests late last week….The figure suggests that while a wave of people looking to exercise their new right has crested since Friday, the flood is continuing. The number of requests works out to more than 10,000 a day through the end of day Monday, or roughly 7 a minute, compared with 20 requests a minute in the initial hours after Google posted the web form.

I wonder if this will prompt the morons at the European Court of Justice to reconsider their ruling? Probably not, I suppose.

WE CAME UP SHORT.

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So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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