Google’s deleted an artist’s blog, along with 14 years of his work, by Fiona MacDonald.

[A]rtist Dennis Cooper has reported that Google has deleted his entire blog without warning – completely erasing 14 years of work in the process. His blog was hosted by the Google-owned platform Blogger, and other than being shown a general “violation of terms of service” statement, Google has offered no explanation for the erasure. …

The case has since gone viral, with publications questioning whether Google was censoring Cooper’s artwork …

But the news has also made people question whether or not Google can be trusted to protect the world’s information in the long-term….

This blog is entirely entrusted to WordPress. If they decided to censor it, to close it down, to make it all disappear — there is nothing anyone outside WordPress could do.

Joanne Nova’s blog is hosted by her on her own computers, which prevents that from occurring but takes more work and expense. Think it too far fetched that someone might want to shut down her blog? From my upcoming book:

In 2012 the Australian Government ran the Finkelstein Inquiry, which sought to regulate bloggers and specifically sought to influence the coverage of climate change—in other words, it sought to shut up my wife, who is Australia’s foremost climate-skeptic blogger. We were considering moving from Australia to Singapore for the political freedom to be able to continue to blog freely.