Google it obeying Chinese laws
by Ivana Strahija on January 26th, 2006 After Microsoft and Yahoo, another great computer and IT related company has given in for the inhumane Chinese laws. Google has produced a special Chinese search service that blocks access to any information which the Chinese government finds inapropriate.
Although the free internet society thinks it's all about money and a vast Chinese market, Google argues that it is better to provide some service rather than none at all.
Google.cn, will block any search results marked as Beijing offending. If this isn't bad enough, Chinese surfers will be served with a page telling them the search has been blocked if it is politically sensitive.
-In order to operate from China, we have removed some content from the search results available on Google.cn, in response to local law, regulation or policy, said Andrew McLaughlin, senior policy counsel at Google. -While removing search results is inconsistent with Google's mission, providing no information - or a heavily degraded user experience that amounts to no information - is more inconsistent with our mission, McLaughlin yapped on.
Even though Google was already serving Chinese surfers from US servers for some time now, it has decided to open a center at China to speed up searches, since Chinese government firewalls and censors mean download times from outside the huge country tend to be slow.
Apart from having trouble with competition in China, whose number one search provider Baidu.com is very successful, the Google search service is itself having problems. Some of the search is still handled from US, so some search keywords (such as 'free Tibet'), presumably out of limits, give back results.
