Gogul (sound familiar?) a new browser project specifically designed for at safe-searching and surfing for children has launched in Russia – but it has shades of China’s infamous Green Dam project. The new online service, consisting of a search engine and Internet Explorer add-on, allows parents to control their kid’s internet access – in other words it’s a kind of Net Nanny software. This allows parents to set the schedule and duration of their child’s internet usage and get the detailed statistics of the pages they visit. It’s pretty standard stuff in this realm. In addition Gogul (love that name!) will only provide access to pre-approved pages and will prevent the launching of any new browser windows that aren’t ‘on the list’.
But parents aren’t fully in control here. The “approved content” consists of over 7,000 Russian web sites which are filtered by a select and slightly shadowy team that consist of parents, professional child psychologists and teachers. The backers of the project are planning to categorize web-pages on an age-based basis and provide additional features till the end of the summer when the new school season will start in Russia.
The browser software is free now, but there are hints that it could become a commercial project. Why? Well an unknown benefactor has invested 15 million rubles (350,000 EUR) in Gogul – so one wonders of they are just doing it for the good of the kiddies?
Gogul has already provoked a lot of – largely negative – feedback on Russian forums, usually related to the controversial design of the website and software, it’s name and ideological connection with an infamous government project called School Portal. As an indication of how draconian this is, there are no search results for the work Putin in English or in Russian.
Really strange, because I have tried searching for Putin using Cyrillic characters http://gogul.tv/search/?words=+%D0%9F%D1%83%D1%82%D0%B8%D0%BD&x=0&y=0
Putin is too hardcore for young audience.
You don’t even get results for “stupid” which is stupid
How do you expect to find “stupid” on russian sites? They are in russian, not in english! Clever?..
I think Gogul should do the following.
1. Change to a better name
2. Try not to be too conservative
Imagine if it Google wouldnt allow you to do a search with the keyword Yahoo.
They would like to do that, but… The they can’t, not because they “do no evil” (yeah right), but because there are laws!
I think Gogul should do the following.
1. Change to a better name
2. Try not to be too conservative
Imagine if it Google wouldnt allow you to do a search with the keyword Yahoo.
Wow I can’t believe this money-laundering worthless POS site has made its way to TC.
Dear author, please try to make TC a better place by NOT writing about 3d echelon projects like this one.
Keep an eye on this new multi-media search engine launching soon.Heard about it and it looks promising.
It will be connected to all mobile networks worldwide(source of revenue) and partnering up with the biggest brands known to mankind,interms of revenue this will be the biggest on the net.Can’t wait to see how this turns out.See demo site below:
http://www.yaffflezone.com
nice job talking in third person, and spamming your site’s link.
russia is titaliristic country..the content will be chosen very well
Ah, well, everyone knows everything about Russia. How clever…
russia is totaliristic country..the content will be chosen very well
in europe, we know way to little about web-control and censorship; actually, we just know the words – but nothing more.
what is filtered, whom can we trust?
themashazine started some research on trust in online media – participationis more than welcome!
http://www.themashazine.com/blog/kbex/nerds-on-trust
Putin is only one letter off from the word for slut/whore in French. Perhaps they discovered that searching for that got some very not child friendly results.
I don’t see how a website using the french term “Putain” (whore) would make it to the 7,000 Russian website “approved content” list.
Goodbye wikipedia too…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gogol
Hold your horses, Mr. Kaplun!
Mr. Gogol is considered the father of modern Russian realism.
http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Gogol
Yeah, ok, then they should have called it Gogol. but they didn’t, so it has nothing to do with him, and everything to do with Google.
Sure I do, Mark!
But Nikolai Vasilievich is Gogol’ (not gogUl) and “gogol” is also a bird, known in-english as “goldeneye”. And russians says “hodit’ gogolem” = to strut
Nice of them to have a name close to google and a logo close to adium.
Not close, it looks exactly like the Adium duck, mid-animation
nobody uses any search engine besides Yandex.ru in Russia anyway.
lol research before you blurp stuff out
What does Gogol have to do with Gogul? I’m sure that wasn’t not their intention.
The project has a future just like any other start-up, no matter what name it has. I’m sure it’s making the buzz only because of the name.
Publicity campaign is a success as far as I can see.
Did you, guys, know that Google (yes, google.com), also filters results by default? No, thank have a look to “Preferences” on any search results page.
I’d say it is good to have a browser that will filter results for kids. Sometimes it is even good for adults, who cannot act like adults.
No jokes. If it is a choice between finding pornography or filtering results, I prefer the second.
Howard the Duck? is that you?
I think it’s possible it doesn’t understand anything that isn’t in the Russian character set. I tried searching for cars and got the same result as the Putin search.
there is nothing to talk about really… this site is bullshit and nobody will talk about it really soon