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How Much Did Google Agree to Censor?  (View post)

Brian M. [PersonRank 10]

Monday, January 30, 2006
18 years ago

Might want to try these: http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2005/06/update_the_filt.php

Nathan Lanier [PersonRank 0]

18 years ago #

Quick note: The filter isn't so good you can't spell:

http://paulboutin.weblogger.com/2006/01/29#a1423

Somebody Outhere [PersonRank 1]

18 years ago #

I amaized how much you hate chinese people. You don't want them to have the best and most useful/friendly search engine, just because you forgot why cenzorship is there in the first place.

besides, 99.99% of users don't care, and those who do care know their ways to reach original google.com. So, google.cn is for the good of those 99.99%.

katinka hesselink [PersonRank 2]

18 years ago #

I don't know how it is in the US, or in China, but in the Netherlands typing google.com redirects to google.nl. So I would not assume that Chinese people can easily reach google.com.

dpneal [PersonRank 10]

18 years ago #

I think this subject is being blown way out of proportion. Google is not doing much different from other search engines out there. At least Chinese users have Google now. Give Google a chance to change things, and maybe re-visit this topic again in a years time to see if anything has changed.

Quite frankly I'm bored with this subject now.

AN [PersonRank 3]

18 years ago #

Outhere: Your logic does not match our earth logic. Someone pointing out the various problems with censorship in a country hates the people of that country? Please get a clue. Your made-up number of 99.99% users not caring isn't that convincing, by the way.

Katinka: There is a link at the bottom of google.nl saying "google.com in English".

dpneal: If nobody makes this an issue nothing will ever change.

Somebody Outhere [PersonRank 1]

18 years ago #

AN: My logic was:
   (1) X does not want G to be present in china because it will be censored there.
   (2) proper access to G is very useful to C even in censored form. (I asked many C myself, btw)

Hence, X does not care too much about C.. how on earth _additional_ search engine can _harm_?

Sorry, hate was too strong a word, but you forget that C are real people, and they deserve a proper search engine, too. (Even if the search engine cannot be as good and objective as google.com, it is still the best and most objective one avaliable there)

----
Disclaimer: for my work google is indispensible, and I would be really bad if someone took it away.

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

18 years ago #

By your logic, Anonymous, Google hated the Chinese for all those years they did not create a censorship-compliant Google.cn. By your logic, no one loves the Chinese more than Yahoo.cn.

I wish it were as easy as a situation of someone hating the Chinese. I wish I could take the blame for this on me. The problem would be solved. Truth is, people on both sides of this issue think very much of what's best for the Chinese – and you will also find Chinese arguing for both sides of the issue.

> for my work google is indispensible, and I would
> be really bad if someone took it away.

This was never about someone taking Google away. In fact, there is and was a Google.com in China. It was once blocked and brought back due to a Chinese outcry. See below in an interview with the Google co-founder.

--------------------

PLAYBOY: How did you respond when the Chinese government blocked Google because your search engine pointed to sites it forbade, including Falun Gong and pro-democracy websites?

BRIN: China actually shut us down a couple of times.

PLAYBOY: Did you negotiate with the Chinese government to unblock your site?

BRIN: No. There was enough popular demand in China for our services – information, commerce and so forth – that the government re-enabled us.

http://www.kottke.org/plus/misc/google-playboy.html
--------------------

The truth is, this was a tough decision even for Google – so it's not about "hate" or "love". It's about deciding what is right, and people disagree about this. Even people inside Google have different opinions on this issue.

kd [PersonRank 1]

18 years ago #

Well, money talks...

Konstantin Levinski [PersonRank 1]

18 years ago #

> for my work google is indispensible, and I would
> be really bad if someone took it away.

This was never about someone taking Google away. In fact, there is and was a Google.com in China. It was once blocked and brought back due to a Chinese outcry. See below in an interview with the Google co-founder.

<snip>

The interview is quite old, and things might have been getting worse. For example, in Russia, we often have to pay for 'foreign' traffic, and it is much slower. I guess that the same holds for China. If google.com is still there, sensitive searches can use it, and everyone else can use google.cn to find recipies/schematics/man pages/whatever. This is really BIG difference between a local and a foreign site.

Chinese people know they are being censored, no need to remind them every single time.

Konstantin Levinski a.k.a. Someone Outhere

P.S. Yahoo.cn caused a user to be put in jail.. different thing, isn't it?

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

18 years ago #

> P.S. Yahoo.cn caused a user to be
> put in jail.. different thing, isn't it?

This is a much larger scale of working with the gov't, for sure.

By the way, I could see that Google.com worked (in late 2005, in China). I used it a lot from within Chinese internet cafes. But we can believe Google when they say it was not the best they could deliver – I don't think that's the core of the moral discussion, even though it may be the core in terms of pragmatism/ business decision/ end justifies the means.

Brian M. [PersonRank 10]

18 years ago #

Google says that Google.com is not available 10% of the time from within China. I don't think that alone constitutes the decision.

I noticed when I was in Germany late last year that going to Google.com defaulted to a German interface. Is the same true in China, Phillip?

wooch [PersonRank 1]

18 years ago #

After reading much of these comments, I see a common fact that most of you are not seeing.

It is the fact that China has a motto that I like to call :" Nothing gets in and nothing gets out."
The Chinese government uses servers that are censored directly by the government. What they are asking is that if the company (Google in this case) wishes too continue doing business in China, they must abide by all their laws.

Google wants too do business, so they are complying with China's standards.

I do not agree with it at all. It is a country that has blinded it's citizens, created a system where only certain people can have information and only use it too make the people other citizens drones too a few queen bees that have only their interests in mind.

On a side note, the action of Google in he Chinese case, shows that they will inheritenly end up giving the U.S. Government total control over what we as Americans can see, hear, listen or talk about.

Am I being a consipirator ?? Maybe just overly causious of what is going on in the world and see that without our voice stopping these actions , we are all going to end up with the same laws and type of governmental rule as China and more closely to the old U.S.S.R.....

Move over Democracy...Communism is back in Vouge...

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

18 years ago #

> I noticed when I was in Germany late
> last year that going to Google.com defaulted
> to a German interface. Is the same
> true in China, Phillip?

Brian, all I know is that I could easily switch to Google.com within China. Could be that www.google.com auto-directed me to www.google.com/intl/zh-CN/ and offered the Google.com link (upon click, a cookie is set so next time you won't be forwarded). Also, in Germany I can easily switch to the .com version. There was a brief period where the geolocation was enforced but I'm happy they stopped that quickly.
Also, these days Google respect content negotiation so that I can have an "English Google Germany."

Two things are different here than in Google.cn from what I know:
- Not all pages Google censored are censored in our network (I can access stormfront.org fine, but Google.de hides it from me)
- Not all censored results show the note that this is censored (as Google says, this is the case with older results... let's see when – if – they fix it).

Also, some pages show in Yahoo.de but don't show in Google.de (e.g. stormfront.org).

Peter Chang [PersonRank 1]

18 years ago #

Since there are only 6 gateways between China and the cyberspace outside it, the 50,000 Chinese cyber cops with 700 Internet monitoring stations around the country can handle most of the censoring jobs domestically. Now Google, joined by Yahoo, Cisco, MSN, Nortel and a few others are redirecting (in the face of greasy Chinese yuan) Chinese readers to the old propaganda portals of the Chinese Communist Party. They might be enjoying the income now, but they will pay dearly when the Chinese people see huge compensations later, right after removing the Communist dictatorship. Just wait and see...

King Tiger [PersonRank 0]

18 years ago #

Censorship is usually, as a general rule not good. My website (www.middlekorea.com, which has nothing to do with the chinese government was censored by google china. I am very ticked off by this limiting of information. Where do I send my hate mail to?

Support Freedom! [PersonRank 10]

18 years ago #

Send it to Google. Better yet, write a letter to the editor of a big newspaper, and call a few radio talk shows--that'll reach a huge audience including many shareholders; and maybe even be heard in the executive offices at Google!

chenxiaobin [PersonRank 1]

18 years ago #

I am chenxiaobin and I am in near the border and I am rearching

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