Monday, August 20, 2007

Google-powered Questions & Answers for China

Wenda (wen da meaning “ask and answer” in Chinese) is a new question & answers site in China... powered by Google, in cooperation with Tianya.cn, a popular net forum in China, as Googlfied reports. It’s re-using the same framework with which Google already launched a free Russian Q&A site recently (the service is using the Google Apps framework as well, though it’s not available to everyone... at least not yet).

This would be Google’s first .cn site accepting user registrations... except that the site is using Tianya’s ICP – the Internet Content Provider number is a badge handed out by the Chinese government to mark self-censorship conformant, legally operating .cn sites – and you will not be able to use a Google account for Wenda. Still, Googlified, citing the Chinese DoNews, says that Google acquired 60% of Tianya (I’m waiting for Google press support’s confirmation on this [Update: Still no confirmation on this, but I’m told that DoNews isn’t a very reliable source, lowering the chances some more that the 60% acquisition bit will turn out to be true.]). Furthermore, Googlified says that Wenda is running on Google’s servers.

User accounts on Tianya.cn, by the way, are vulnerable to XSS (cross-site scripting) injections, meaning others might be able to steal your cookie login credentials, as co-editor Tony Ruscoe found out today. Tony created a use-case which could enable an attacker to construct a URL on a tianya.cn sub-domain to execute arbitrary JavaScript (I sent this off to Google security, just in case).

In other, related news Tianya.cn was recently involved in an attempt by the Chinese government to suppress the reporting on a bridge collapse in Fenghuang a week ago. Quote the Associated Press last Friday:

Communist authorities have banned most state media from reporting on the deadly collapse of a bridge in southern China, with local officials punching and chasing reporters from the scene, reporters said Friday.

The harassment and the accompanying news ban was issued by the Chinese Central Propaganda Department on Thursday, the AP writes. The AP cites a reporter saying that an unidentified mob of locals “roughed up” a group of five reporters who were interviewing the families of those who were killed in the bridge collapse. The AP continues:

“The local government does not want the media to uncover the collapse,” said Li Datong, a veteran newspaperman forced from a top editing job two years ago for running reports that angered authorities. (...)

Accounts of reporters being beaten by local thugs have increased, with one reporter even being beaten to death early this year. (...)

In a further sign of how the government was trying to control reporting from Fenghuang, an account of the reporters’ harassment posted on a popular Internet forum http://www.tianya.cn Friday morning was removed several hours later, the reporter said.

Quick censorship of factual reports is one of the ways to keep your ICP license in China. At this time, ICP holder Google China agreed to self-censor web search results, satellite imagery, book scans, as well as Google News (as Google isn’t transparent about exactly how they work with the Chinese government, the precise scope and methodology of the removals are hard to measure). Google stated they believe this compromise is necessary to successfully expand in China, arguing it’s “the best way to work toward the results we all desire.”

[Thanks Cloudream, 徐杰/ Google Magazine, Tony and Jason!]

Google-powered Questions ... by Philipp Lenssen | Comments (2+8)

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