Google to block certain words for searches in China

MrPudding

Heard this on the radio this morning. I am surprised no one has mentioned it yet. Google has agreed with the Chinese goverment to censor searches on dangerous words like Tibet or Tianiman (sp?) or square or massacre on order to be allowed to trade there.

I don't know, I kind of thought they would have a bit more moral backbone than that. But then I suppose it's all about the bottom line.

http://news.ft.com/cms/s/0cf3fc52-8d0b-11da-9daf-0000779e2340.html

MrP

simu

Moral backbone? It's a search engine, not Jesus on his 2nd comming!

bonkey

MrPudding wrote:

I don't know, I kind of thought they would have a bit more moral backbone than that. But then I suppose it's all about the bottom line.

To be fair, one could summarise the entire dealings the West has had with China in the last two decades so simply....and be just as equally oversimplifying things.

China has indeed been sucked-up-to by the developed Western nations. In part, an awful lot of this has been in order to make money on the West's part. However, one cannot also deny that conditions in China have improved as the Chinese slowly, slowly learn that there are aspects of our life which they want more of.

If google stayed out of China, it would be somewhat equivalent to the West having decided that it would completely embargo China until China was willing to trade on Western terms. Not only would this have effected their bottom line, but it would not have provided the impetus for change that has resulted from their limited, government-constricted dealings.

Instead, google went in having brokered a compromise. From what I was reading on Slashdot today, its visible censorship. The search-results aren't invisibly dropped, so all you get is one side of the story, but rather you get told that hits got censored (to what detail, I don't know), so you are fully aware that there is information here that the government has decided they are not happy for you to see.

If thats correct, I think it could be argued that going in to China with preconditions is the right decision. Google is such a strong brand that it will enter the public consciousness (so to speak) in China, and from there, the extent and nature of government censorship is likely to become a more visible issue which I can only see as a good thing.

Google's (informal) motto is "don't be evil", but in this case perhaps they have to settle with "be as unevil as possible". Staying out of China is just as much of an assistance to the continuation of censorship as going in there could ever be.....without even the possibility of directly raising public consciousness about the issue in the first place.

jc

Mad Mike

Will it be possible to get around this? If you are in China can you redirect your query to a different countries google which isn't censored?

Mad Mike

Played around with this.

http://www.google.ie = Irish google
http://www.google.com redirects to google.ie
but
http://www.google.co.uk = uk google
http://www.google.cn = Chinese Google

Although google.cn is in Chinese it understands english. Using the search string "Tianenmen massacre" gives plenty of hits about the massacre.

ssss

simu wrote:

Moral backbone? It's a search engine, not Jesus on his 2nd comming!

It's a multinational corporation, and a very powerful one at that. Two powers covering their own backs at the expense of morality and the common good.

MrPudding

I don't think it is quite that simple though. It will know where the search is coming from from your IP. Someone coming from a Chinese IP may not have access to the others. Equaly, someone from a none Chinese IP may not be subject to the censorship. Getting to the site from a non-Chinese gateway may get past it.

MrP

MrPudding

Yeah, they are just a search engine but with a motto like "don't be evil" I expected a bit more.

Bonkey, that is interesting. I didn't have a lot of time today to look into it. The fact that users will be made aware they are being censored is very important. It might actually work against the government, not as much as having the info available would but still, it is something.

MrP

fletch

Surely can you not just change your regional settings in Windows and it will redirect users?

aidan_walsh

fletch wrote:

Surely can you not just change your regional settings in Windows and it will redirect users?

It doesn't work like that. Google will be checking to see if the queries come from Chinese sources by the IP address.

CiaranC

This is old, old news. Its so old it was on Slashdot months ago, months after it broke

Presumably the censorship is only applied to users behind the great firewall of china, not westerners visiting google.cn or people staying in the Beijing Hilton.

voxpop

If they censor users in China, whos to say they are not alreay censoring us in some way.Dodgy stuff me thinks

aidan_walsh

voxpop wrote:

If they censor users in China, whos to say they are not alreay censoring us in some way.Dodgy stuff me thinks

Because this censorship is mandated by the Chinese government to allow Google to operate in China. What possible reason do Google as a company have to censor us? They couldn't succeed anyway, as the information would still be available on Yahoo!, etc.

voxpop

They already censor us in some ways

http://sethf.com/anticensorware/general/google-censorship.php

http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=google+censorship&sm=Yahoo%21+Search&fr=FP-tab-web-t&toggle=1&cop=&ei=UTF-8

Where's the line ?

Don't be evil subject to profitabilty

Dave!

aidan_walsh wrote:

It doesn't work like that. Google will be checking to see if the queries come from Chinese sources by the IP address.

Click!

aidan_walsh

DaveMcG wrote:

Click!

Don't suppose the Chinese will have requested censorship of ways to get around the censorship, do you? Or that they will already be blocked by the Chinese firewall?

Dave!

They'd hardly be that picky would they!!!

Bastads...:mad:

MrPudding

DaveMcG wrote:

Click!

I am pretty sure that if my company can block access to proxy services the chinese government probably could as well.

MrP

elvis2002

noone uses google in China anways. Baidu is the most popular search engine in China. Most Chinese who use the internet never even heard of google. My gf who is chinese says this is all talk etc by western media and that its not as enforced as it all sounds. Claims that the Tibet cant be searched for is insane.

Mad Mike

Even if it is possible to bypass using proxies it probably doesn't matter. The majority of people are likely to continue to use the standard portals and the ban will have the desired effect.

Abraham Lincoln famously said:
"You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time."

Unfortunately what he neglected to add is that you can fool most of the people most of the time and that is all an unscrupuous government has to do to keep itself in power.

Hobbes

They are following Chinese law. This is nothing new and you didn't see anything in the news when Yahoo and MSN did it some time back.

Other examples of Chinese law is that you are not allowed refer to Taiwan as a country in any documentation.

As for google unlike the other search engines they have added "Some items have been removed under Chinese Law". Others just censor.

You will find subjective history in all countries btw, just China does it on a such grander scale.

matrim

voxpop wrote:

They already censor us in some ways

http://sethf.com/anticensorware/general/google-censorship.php

http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=google+censorship&sm=Yahoo%21+Search&fr=FP-tab-web-t&toggle=1&cop=&ei=UTF-8

Where's the line ?

http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=yahoo+censorship&prssweb=Search&ei=UTF-8&fr=FP-tab-web-t&fl=0&x=wrt

http://www.google.ie/search?hl=en&q=yahoo+censorship&btnG=Google+Search&meta=


As Hobbes said, the other search engines do it aswell.
The only reason the story is out now is because it's google and many people want to try to make them look bad.

daisyhead

bonkey wrote:

Instead, google went in having brokered a compromise. From what I was reading on Slashdot today, its visible censorship. The search-results aren't invisibly dropped, so all you get is one side of the story, but rather you get told that hits got censored (to what detail, I don't know), so you are fully aware that there is information here that the government has decided they are not happy for you to see.

If thats correct, I think it could be argued that going in to China with preconditions is the right decision. Google is such a strong brand that it will enter the public consciousness (so to speak) in China, and from there, the extent and nature of government censorship is likely to become a more visible issue which I can only see as a good thing.

Censorship in China is NOT an invisible issue that needs Google's help to bring to the "public consciousness". I lived there for two years- in a bugged apartment- and I can assure you that everyone is well aware of censorship!

Hobbes

daisyhead wrote:

Censorship in China is NOT an invisible issue that needs Google's help to bring to the "public consciousness". I lived there for two years- in a bugged apartment- and I can assure you that everyone is well aware of censorship!

Knowing censorship exists and knowing what is being censored are two different things.

For example. I did my Primary School in England. No mention whatsoever of what the causes of daily IRA bomb attacks in NI and in England. The only thing I recall was something along the lines of "They don't want to be part of England, which is why they hate us" by a teacher. Didn't really know what was going on in Ireland until I moved back to Ireland and did schooling there.

Imposter

Interesting opinion here comparing it to BT's censorship of sites that supposedly contain child porn (This is not a discussion on child porn, it's a discussion on censorship). He also states that Yahoo ans MSN already do something similar.

Sangre

The Great Firewall of China

seamus

The Chinese Government has full control over the ISPs, and afaik importing unauthorised Satellite equipment is heavily punishable.

While ultimately it should be possible to make some sort of net connection that's not under the censorship of the Chinese government, I can't see too many Chinese people being able to afford the cost of an international dial-up connection.

stevejazzx

Why publicise issues you don't won't people reading about? Surely this will just lead more interest in the subject matter. Like when a movie is banned people become intrigued and want to see it.
Censorship can only stimulate people into other ways of accessing that information, be through books, videos ect.