Google offers censored Chinese search

[Rik Meleet]

Link

Google offers censored Chinese search
The search will block access to blogs, chat rooms and web sites in order to avoid confrontation with Chinese government.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Web search leader Google said on Tuesday that it was introducing a new service for China that seeks to avoid a confrontation with the government by restricting access to services to which users contribute such as e-mail, chat rooms and blogs.

The new Chinese service at http://www.google.cn will offer a self-censored version of Google's (Research) popular search system that restricts access to thousands of terms and Web sites.

Cowards. Considering Google's unofficial motto = "don't be evil", censoring itself is a sign of weakness. Money over independence. :thumbdown

 

[Rhymes]

Hmmm.... I agree. It's a shame that some american company would help the chinese government to controle its people. Especially if their is ever a war in which US tries to liberate the Chinese people from the supposed dictatorship.

But it depends, they might help the Chinese people a lot more as a censored search tool then if they are completely banned from the country, if thats possible?

 

[amadeus]

At least it's honest, because if you run a search, it'll say something along the lines of "in accordance with local laws and regulations, some search results were omitted."

There are no restrictions on searches in English, though.

 

[El_Machinae]

Okay, side question ... do you think it's more likely that the Chinese will be able to find forbidden information if they have sensored searches, or if they have no access to a search engine at all?

The ability to block access to information is not as strong as getting access to information.

 

[nonconformist]

There are no restrictions on searches in English, though.

If you mean "There are no restrictions on the English Google", then I doubt it.

 

[Little Raven]

Google is now a publically traded company. They have an obligation to their shareholders to maximize profit. If they fail to do so, they can (and will) be sued.

Welcome to capitalism.

 

[Taliesin]

Microsoft already got in some hot water over something like this. They censor their MySpace blogs in China, so that posts with a subject like "Tibet" or "Falun Gong" cannot be posted, and posts with similar words in their body are quickly and automatically deleted.

 

[Abaddon]

Well also, if they didnt work with the government, the entire google.com could just become blocked in china.

 

[GrandAdmiral]

Microsoft already got in some hot water over something like this. They censor their MySpace blogs in China, so that posts with a subject like "Tibet" or "Falun Gong" cannot be posted, and posts with similar words in their body are quickly and automatically deleted.

Thats just garbage. People can't express their opinions on Taiwan and Tibet because it will infect the population into revolt. Sounds like a very delicate way to maintain power. I just can't respect these kinds of tactics.

I do feel like its a delicate situation for the US companies though. If they refuse to provide the services its really no loss for China and that just gives the US less influence there. Somebody would easily take their place and like I stated before China's number search engine is domestic.

 

[Aphex_Twin]

If a Chinese wants to view subversive material on his computer, he only needs to go as far as a proxy server (easy to find with Google). So for what is really worth, the decision is pretty toothless. The Internet is bigger than governments.

By refusing to censor they'd have had two things:
1. No Google directly accessible in China
2. Google's competitors directly accessible in China

 

[plarq]

IIRC, 4 years ago, Google's local competitor Baidu (home-grown search engine), accused Google for sensitive materials, and Google was banned for several months.

I don't care too much, there're tons of engines if I want to look up for some blocked information.

Edit: The thing that I'm really afraid of is, someday we'll have no real things needed to be blocked, as our people will never comprehend those ideas. The only comfort is, our goverment seems to be ignorant about materials in English, since less than 0.1% people can really use English fluently.

 

[Cuivienen]

If you mean "There are no restrictions on the English Google", then I doubt it.

There aren't. In China, the government often blocks search results from Google.com, but, until now, Google itself did not block any content.

 

[Red Stranger]

Why don't Chinese people just go to google.com instead of google.cn?

 

[Cuivienen]

See above. The Chinese government blocks a lot of search results from Google.com.

 

[amadeus]

If you mean "There are no restrictions on the English Google", then I doubt it.

No, on the .cn Google, I was able to type in controversial statements and get perfectly legitimate results. The "Dalai Lama," for example, would show the corresponding website.

 

[amadeus]

See above. The Chinese government blocks a lot of search results from Google.com.

There's always a way of getting around that sort of thing. China doesn't have enough manpower in the world to keep a tight enough lid on pro-democracy/anti-CCP websites.

 

[plarq]

I think I'll try another search engine. How is altavista?

 

[plarq]

No, on the .cn Google, I was able to type in controversial statements and get perfectly legitimate results. The "Dalai Lama," for example, would show the corresponding website.

The restriction is that if you're using a server from Mainland China, some result will be blocked.

 

[amadeus]

I had imagined that China has their own filters.

 

[Tenochtitlan]

Why are they doing this? In Saudi Arabia, the government has power over all of the ISPs available, and therefore has the ability to block or filter any website on the internet without the help of google or microsoft.
(Not that I agree with blocking websites hehe)