Because when someone like David Karp speaks, he is talking about a strictly, technical truth and not the practical truth of the situation. We punish are children for being deceptive when the pull this stunt, we reward[1] or ignore politicians and business folks.
The practical truth is that these blogs have been censored, because if Google cannot see something, it doesn't exist for 99.9% of the people.
1) You might be saying to yourself, I don't reward or approve this conduct. Did you watch West Wing? Did you like the C. J. Cregg character?
Oh, they aren't censoring it in the strictest sense of the word. They are just making it so they can't be found. Censor carries a lot of negative connotation, and they are trying to distance themselves from that on a technicality.
This sort of spin is marvelously effective because, even though it leaves a bad taste in the mouth of anyone who recognizes it for what it is, it allows people in Karp's position to dig rhetorical trenches out in front of the substance of their actions and redirect any discussion into one about defining terms. It doesn't matter one whit that making it prohibitively hard for anyone to access content is just as much censorship of that content as disallowing it entirely is; nothing sucks the air out of a discussion faster than an extended yes-it-is/no-it-isn't headbutting contest over the meaning of a word.
He must have gone to school the same place as James Clapper. He didn't "censor" anything by removing the content. He simply removed all search index references.
The practical truth is that these blogs have been censored, because if Google cannot see something, it doesn't exist for 99.9% of the people.
1) You might be saying to yourself, I don't reward or approve this conduct. Did you watch West Wing? Did you like the C. J. Cregg character?