quote:

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Google Agrees to Censor Results in China By MICHAEL LIEDTKE, AP Business Writer
Tue Jan 24, 7:34 PM ET

Online search engine leader Google Inc. has agreed to censor its results in China, adhering to the country's free-speech restrictions in return for better access in the Internet's fastest growing market.

The Mountain View, Calif.-based company planned to roll out a new version of its search engine bearing China's Web suffix ".cn," on Wednesday. A Chinese-language version of Google's search engine has previously been available through the company's dot-com address in the United States.

By creating a unique address for China, Google hopes to make its search engine more widely available and easier to use in the world's most populous country.

Because of government barriers set up to suppress information, Google's China users previously have been blocked from using the search engine or encountered lengthy delays in response time.

The service troubles have frustrated many Chinese users, hobbling Google's efforts to expand its market share in a country that expected to emerge as an Internet gold mine over the next decade.

China already has more than 100 million Web surfers and the audience is expected to swell substantially — an alluring prospect for Google as it tries to boost its already rapidly rising profits.

Baidu.com Inc., a Beijing-based company in which Google owns a 2.6 percent stake, currently runs China's most popular search engine. But a recent Keynote Systems survey of China's Internet preferences concluded that Baidu remains vulnerable to challenges from Google and Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO - news)

To obtain the Chinese license, Google agreed to omit Web content that the country's government finds objectionable. Google will base its censorship decisons on guidance provided by Chinese government officials.

Although China has loosened some of its controls in recent years, some topics, such as Taiwan's independence and 1989's Tiananmen Square massacre, remain forbidden subjects.

Google officials characterized the censorship concessions in China as an excruciating decision for a company that adopted "don't be evil" as a motto. But management believes it's a worthwhile sacrifice.

"We firmly believe, with our culture of innovation, Google can make meaningful and positive contributions to the already impressive pace of development in China," said Andrew McLaughlin, Google's senior policy counsel.

Google's decision rankled Reporters Without Borders, a media watchdog group that has sharply criticized Internet companies including Yahoo and Microsoft Corp.'s MSN.com for submitting to China's censorship regime.

"This is a real shame," said Julien Pain, head of Reporters Without Borders' Internet desk. "When a search engine collaborates with the government like this, it makes it much easier for the Chinese government to control what is being said on the Internet."

When Google censors results in China, it intends to post notifications alerting users that some content has been removed — to comply with local laws. The company provides similar alerts in Germany and France when, to comply with national laws, it censors results to remove references to Nazi paraphernalia.

Google is cooperating with China's government at the same time it is battling the U.S. government over a subpoena seeking a breakdown of one week's worth of search requests — a list that would cover millions of terms.

Reflecting its uneasy alliance with the Chinese government, Google isn't releasing all its services.

Neither Google's e-mail nor blogging services will be offered in China because the company doesn't want to risk being ordered by the government to turn over anyone's personal information. The e-mail service, called Gmail, creates a huge database of users' messages and makes them instantly searchable. The blogging services contain a wide range of personal background.

Yahoo came under fire last year after it provided the government with the e-mail account information of a Chinese journalist who was later convicted for violating state secrecy laws.

Initially, Google's Chinese service will be limited to searching Web pages and images. The company also will provide local search results and a special edition of its news service that will be confined to government-sanctioned media.

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quote: Mike Heenan

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Although I'm no fan of conservatives, lets keep the political comments off the board thanks

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I don't see anything "political" about any of the comments in this thread. Well, until the part of your post before the comma. Heed your own advice and let the moderators moderate.
 

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Posted by Bill Enos (Member # 440) on 01-25-2006, 11:48 PM:
 
Lyle, you hit it on the head, Mr. Heenan needs to remove the only political comment so far, namely his own.

Noting what a former president said and did is history not politics.

For Google though, if they're going to play in somebody elses yard they have to play the house rules.

[ 01-26-2006, 06:57 AM: Message edited by: Bill Enos ]
 

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Posted by Ron Keillor (Member # 1790) on 01-25-2006, 11:50 PM:
 
Google is censoring , critics of google are censuring.
 

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Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 01-26-2006, 12:35 PM:
 
The search bar on my Firefox 1.5 installation defaults to Google. I have switched it to Yahoo.


I think Google, Wal-Mart and other corporations promoting the communist Chinese government's agenda (or at least facilitating it) ought to display that good old hammer and sickle. They sure don't have any business displaying the stars and stripes.
 

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Posted by David Buckley (Member # 2600) on 01-26-2006, 03:05 PM:
 
Heard on the news the other night that Wal-mart is 5% of China's GDP. Which on that basis make Wal-mart about the size of Algeria, and not much smaller than the entirity of New Zealand <gulp>

So perhaps Wal-Mart should take down the Stars and Stripes and replace it with the Democratic (or possibly Federal) Republic of Wal-Mart flag
 

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Posted by Phil Hill (Member # 371) on 01-26-2006, 06:49 PM:
 
Bobby, not sure why you switched to Yahoo... they and MSN have long ago agreed to China's "conditions" so as to do biz in that country.

I'm more upset at the search companies cow-towering to the US government "boots" to turn over the names of users/citizens that search certain subjects.

While Yahoo and MSN have turned over their user info, Google is resisting and most likely will lose to the almighty in a court case.

So much for freedom, free speech, and privacy.
 

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Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 01-26-2006, 07:10 PM:
 
Now my Firefox search bar is switched to Ask Jeeves.


Jeeves hasn't sold out yet has he?

***

All those country club globalization cheerleaders were talking years ago about how American business would democratize China. Hmm. Let's think about that for a bit.

The Chinese government has slid backwards and become more efficient at censoring free speech, tracking down dissidents and religious activists and executing lots of folks. That government takes only 1 month to execute 1,000 prisoners. It takes America 30 years to kill that many.

OTOH, the United States is now spying on its own citizens with little if any legal authority to do so. Anyone not towing the line of the party in power is called a traitor.

Sounds to me like the Chinese government is doing a good job of turning us into them.
 

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Posted by Joshua Waaland (Member # 287) on 01-28-2006, 07:59 AM:
 

quote: Mike Heenan

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Although I'm no fan of conservatives, lets keep the political comments off the board thanks

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????????????????

You were kidding right?
 

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Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 01-28-2006, 03:20 PM:
 
I think I'm probably playing Devil's Advocate here, because I was also alarmed at Google's decision. Having been alarmed, however, I was moderately impressed by a Google spokesman's response when he was given a grilling by John 'kebabber of politicians' Humphrys on the Today programme one morning last week.

The two substantive points in the response were that providing some information to Chinese consumers was better then providing none at all, which would have been the case if Google had refused to comply with the Chinese censorship legislation (because in that scenario the 'Great Firewall of China' would have blocked Google altogether); and that the Chinese Google site will state if it is withholding relevant results in response to a search query.

The latter point strikes me as the more significant: if Chinese Internet users are being told that they're being censored, that will raise awareness of what the regime is up to. It'll be interesting to see if that generates any internal pressure against the Chinese government.
 

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Posted by Mike Heenan (Member # 392) on 01-28-2006, 04:11 PM:
 
No I am not kidding, were you?
 

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Posted by David Buckley (Member # 2600) on 01-28-2006, 10:43 PM:
 
I'm with Leo on this one, but it is a hard call. The real question (which until the memoirs come out will remain speculation) is that do Google's leaders actually believe they are doing the right thing, or is it all cynicism and money.

Google do appear (as Phil points out) to be trying to do the right thing when The Government comes knocking wanting information. What this illustrates is not as its popularly being portrayed ie Google=good Yahoo=bad, but how dangerous it is for large quantities of data of use to the government to be collected by a third party, sooner or later the government will want some of it.
 

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Posted by Joshua Waaland (Member # 287) on 01-29-2006, 08:39 PM:
 
oops
 

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