Comments on: Google in China: any cause for hope?

By: Ewan McIntosh

Ewan McIntosh — Tue, 31 Jan 2006 19:27:38 +0000

It seems that despite negotiations with the Chinese Google still can’t get their site through. See the comments from China on my post: http://edu.blogs.com/edublogs/2006/01/googlecn_the_ch.html

By: StealthBadger.net » Blog Archive » More on Google.cn

StealthBadger.net » Blog Archive » More on Google.cn — Sat, 28 Jan 2006 08:23:00 +0000

[...] Ethan Zuckerman has been poking into just what the filter does and does not do – it’s pretty ingenious, but again, possible to defeat once you’re aware of it. It’s hard not to be unaware of it given the nature of the Chinese language, and how pictographs are used in so many different places. [...]

By: Hello Company

Hello Company — Fri, 27 Jan 2006 12:55:30 +0000

A Roundup of the Communist Google: Maybe it is a Trojan Horse

The company with the “Do No Evil” slogan is under heavy attack. A samping from a heated online conversation stream:

The Times calls the Chinese Google site a Communist Google which will block the
the three ts and the two cs: references t…

By: …My heart’s in Accra » Understanding how Google.cn filters

…My heart’s in Accra » Understanding how Google.cn filters — Fri, 27 Jan 2006 00:16:58 +0000

[...] This bit of hackery helps complicate the result I had last night searching for “太石村” – Taishi Village – I noted the absence of wikipedia results and concluded that this was because Wikipedia wasn’t indexed by Google.cn. The actual situation turns out to be far more interesting. [...]

By: mj

mj — Thu, 26 Jan 2006 22:44:18 +0000

Ethan,

For non-Chinese readers, I think a comparison of the different search results from Google images illlustrates what’s happening here might be instructive.

To wit:

“a day on the square”

http://images.google.com/images?q=tiananmen+square [from google.com]
http://images.google.cn/images?q=tiananmen+square [from google.cn]

“teddy bear vs the torture chamber”

http://images.google.com/images?q=falun+gong [from google.com]
http://images.google.cn/images?q=falun+gong [from google.cn]

-M

By: Cos

Cos — Thu, 26 Jan 2006 19:05:33 +0000

Some nitpicky errata…

Or blame for refusing to play the game at all?

Did you mean “refusing to play” or “playing”?

I know that he think very carefully – almost sounds like bad Chinese translation :)

By: Ethan

Ethan — Thu, 26 Jan 2006 14:37:53 +0000

Andrew, I’ll ask the next time I speak to him. You’ve got a number of very important points in your Open Letter – thanks for the link.

By: Andrew S

Andrew S — Thu, 26 Jan 2006 13:45:27 +0000

Ethan, could you please ask Andrew McLaughlin why the disclaimer about sites being blocked is on the bottom of the search results, rather than on the top? Around 90% of search users never see the bottom of the page, thus will miss the disclaimer completely. In a search on google.cn on a topic such as "Falun Gong", seeing this disclaimer is critical, as the search results return government lies and propaganda, as all of the truthful sites are filtered out. I write about this further in An open letter to Google.