Google, the world’s most popular search engine, will notify users of its opposition to the Stop Online Piracy Act, commonly known as SOPA, on its U.S. homepage tomorrow.
The search giant confirmed in a statement that it will join Wikipedia, Reddit, and other major technology companies and websites, in a unified day of action.
But Google’s pages are not expected to go dark, nor will the service be shut down for the day, unlike others.
“Like many businesses, entrepreneurs and web users, we oppose these bills because there are smart, targeted ways to shut down foreign rogue websites without asking American companies to censor the Internet,” a spokesperson for Google said. “Tomorrow we will be joining many other tech companies to highlight this issue on our U.S. home page.”
While Reddit was the first to announce it would shutter its doors in protest over the anti-piracy bill, which threatens to have irreparable harm on the web, Wikipedia is the largest online property to do so.
Twitter’s chief executive Dick Costolo said that the microblogging site would not proactively protest the legislation, calling the move to close a worldwide business “foolish”. But some are saying that the tweet was taken out of context.
Twitter will not be censoring or blacking-out the site, though it has previously made statements to formally oppose the bills.
Wikipedia and Reddit will both go dark on January 18th at 12 midnight and 8 am Eastern time respectively.
SOPA was shelved earlier this week for until more work is done. The White House also made it clear that it does not support the ’shoot first, ask questions later’ draft legislation, indicating that the President could veto the bill if it ever landed on his desk.
Image source: Flickr.
Related:
- Wikipedia confirms site blackout to protest SOPA anti-piracy bill
- Geeks 1, Congress 0: Controversial anti-piracy bill SOPA ’shelved’
- Unless Facebook, Google blackout, SOPA will succeed: Here’s what you can do
- Reddit will enact ‘nuclear option’ to protest SOPA, PIPA
- Reddit’s anti-SOPA “nuclear” protest is a good start
- SOPA: Why the ‘broken web’ should stay broken
- Google, Amazon, Twitter and Facebook consider ‘nuclear’ blackout
- Go Daddy really and truly opposes SOPA now
- iGeneration: Would a Wikipedia blackout be such a bad thing?
- Google, Amazon, Twitter and Facebook consider ‘nuclear’ blackout
- London Calling: U.S. ‘threatened to blacklist Spain’ over SOPA-style law
- European Parliament ‘opposes’ SOPA copyright law in new resolution
- CNET: DNS provision pulled from SOPA, victory for opponents
- Twitter shutting down for SOPA? That’s just ‘foolish,’ CEO says
- How SOPA would affect you: FAQ
