Tuesday, January 31, 2006
Google's Chinese censorship efforts tank
China's Internet-filtering rules block unwelcome search results -- but only if they're spelled correctly.
SAN FRANCISCO (Business 2.0) - Google (Research) is getting lambasted online for its new policy of accommodating China's Internet-censorship rules. But with its new Chinese search engine, Google.cn, Google isn't living up to its reputation for technical wizardry. Paul Boutin points out on his blog that if you search for "Tiananmen," you get peaceful photos of the Beijing square -- but if you search for common misspellings like "Tienanmen," "Tianenmen," or "Tiananman," you get photos of tanks. (Full disclosure: Paul's a good friend of mine, but I hadn't seen anyone else make this observation.)Full Article by Owen Thomas
