Google pussy out (?) China Acquiesce (?)

strobe

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTOE66J06Q20100720

UPDATE 1-China satisfied with Google search engine tweak


BEIJING/SHANGHAI July 20 (Reuters) - China is satisfied that U.S. Internet giant Google Inc (GOOG.O) is complying with Chinese laws after it tweaked the way it directs users to an unfiltered search page, a senior official said on Tuesday.

The comments from a Ministry of Industry and Information official largely echoed previous Chinese statements, but are still likely to be seen as good news for the company as Beijing has been coy about its long-term future in China.

Google is also in the process of ending its partnership with Chinese community site Tianya, in which it owns a stake, the firm said in a blogpost on Tuesday.

"As it was announced earlier this year, this week we will be ending technical cooperation with Tianya on Tianya Come and Tianya Questions," Google said in its official Chinese language blog. (here)

Google bought the stake in Tianya.cn in August 2007.

Google is trying to achieve the delicate balance of ending self-censorship of searches while holding onto its business foothold in a country where control of information has been key to ensuring the Communist Party's decades in power.

Google's market share in China continued to slip in the second quarter, falling to 27.3 percent from 29.5 percent in the first, according to data from research firm iResearch. [IDnTOE66I03Y]

Before its high-profile spat with Beijing, Google was slowly gaining ground on China's top search engine Baidu (BIDU.O). At the end of last year, Google's market share was 32.8 percent.

Guxiang, a company that operates Google's websites in China, had committed to "abide by Chinese law", and ensure the company did not provide illegal content, said Zhang Feng, head of the ministry's communication development division.

"After examination, we have concluded that it has basically met the requirements according to the relevant laws and regulations," Zhang told a news conference.

Google unexpectedly warned in January it might quit China over censorship concerns and after suffering a hacker attack it said came from within the country, but eventually terminated its Google.cn search service and started rerouting users to its unfiltered Hong Kong site. [ID:nSGE60C01H]

In early July the company ended automatic redirection, saying Beijing was unhappy about the system and would not renew Google's operating licence if it continued.

Visitors are now invited to click through to the Hong Kong page instead of being sent straight there. China's firewall remains in place however, meaning most sensitive sites turned up on searches are inaccessible from within the country's borders. [ID:nSGE6680F9]

Google's move was seen as a sign that the firm would fight to hold onto as much of its China business as possible, and Beijing said earlier this month it had renewed its Chinese operating licence after the company "made improvements". [ID:nTOE66A00R]

Guxiang accepted that government regulators will have the right to supervise content provided by the firm, Zhang said, declining to comment directly on Google's provision of the link to its uncensored Hong Kong page.

"As for the question of Hong Kong, this is an operational act made by the company itself," he added, without elaborating.

China's decision to allow Google to continue operating in China apparently resolved a months-long censorship dispute that had threatened the U.S. company's future in the world's top Internet market by users.

The move also removed another thorn in U.S.-China relations and reflects Beijing's desire to be seen as friendly to major foreign firms in spite of ideological differences, analysts said. (Reporting by Ben Blanchard and Melanie Lee; Editing by Ken Wills and Alex Richardson)

Hey I was just noticed this on reuters and was wondering what people made of it?

If anyone doesn't know the back story: "The conflict arose in January when Google decided to end its four-year practice of omitting search results that the Chinese government considers subversive or pornographic. Google made the decision after blaming Chinese computer hackers for an attack it said was aimed at stealing the company's technology and e-mail information from human rights activists." Associated Press

So what's the deal? Have China basically rolled over and they are just going to pretend they don't notice the link to google.hk? Or are google basically caving in? Were people from China able to log into google.hk before all this in order to circumnavigate the censorship in anyway? Or is this something google have now forced the Chinese to make available that wasn't before?

giggsy664

Disappointing thread title is disappointing.

And slightly mis-leading.

drunkmonkey

+1
just going to have to google it myself:mad:

First link on google for "google pussy out" http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7904002480261450358# enjoy the pussy;)

brianthebard

tl:dr

longshanks

i just googled 'pussy out'. it linked me to porn. didn't bother with china aquascientist

Fizman

longshanks wrote: »

didn't bother with china aquascientist

I just googled that exact term and this thread was the first link. Vicious circle we have here folks. The Chinese are not to be trusted!

NothingMan

mmm.... Asian porn...

NothingMan

Fizman wrote: »

I just googled that exact term and this thread was the first link. Vicious circle we have here folks. The Chinese are not to be trusted!

That's not a vicious circle, this is a vicious circe.

*makes vicious circle motion with hand*

This joke don't work so well in text .

28064212

Basic story:
Google sets up google.cn. Searches on google.cn are filtered (by google, at the request of the Chinese government). So a search on google.cn for "Tiananmen Square" returns completely different results to the same search on google.ie. This is on top of the filtering the Chinese government already does. So, for example, if a Chinese person did a search on google.ie for "Tiananmen Square", they could see the same results as us, but likely couldn't click through to any of the pages.

After the hacker attack, Google pulls the google.cn site, and instead automatically redirects to the google.hk website, where results aren't filtered by google, but clicking through to pages are still filtered by the government.

What happened now is that Google have stopped automatically redirecting people to google.hk, you now have to click through. You can see for yourself if you go to www.google.cn. If you click on the image, it will redirect you to google.hk. It's a tiny change, hardly a huge stepdown by Google