The great firewall of China

[Dan R]

I heard that google signed some kind of deal with China- they wouldn't mention any negative news on their site about China, in exchange for letting Chinese people access google without being blocked.

 

It's true- if you see a news story on yahoo news about China, most likely you won't be able to find it on google news.

When I tried to get to google (www.google.com) from china, I was always ported to their google counterpart in china...

 

Many computer people I meet in china all liked using google as their choice for searching...

This has nothing to do with if you "like" to use google or not. It's about google signing a deal with the Chinese government not to post negative news on their site about China.

The Chinese Gov is more complete than that. Give credit where credit is do. They do not give access to sites dealing with specific topics that disagree with the official position even if they do not mention the Chinese Government.

[david_dawei]

I heard that google signed some kind of deal with China- they wouldn't mention any negative news on their site about China, in exchange for letting Chinese people access google without being blocked.

 

It's true- if you see a news story on yahoo news about China, most likely you won't be able to find it on google news.

When I tried to get to google (www.google.com) from china, I was always ported to their google counterpart in china...

 

Many computer people I meet in china all liked using google as their choice for searching...

This has nothing to do with if you "like" to use google or not. It's about google signing a deal with the Chinese government not to post negative news on their site about China.

I understand that.. I'm just point that it seems interesting to me that , based on the people I talked to, that they struck this deal to clean up the search engine of choice..

[Dan R]

When the news was announced I remember that Yahoo refused and was blocked for a while. Google agreed because they have a policy to meet local censorship rules. They said that many countries limit what they can access. If I remember right Germany and France were among the list of countries that were mainly Arab countries.

[awch]

I heard that google signed some kind of deal with China- they wouldn't mention any negative news on their site about China, in exchange for letting Chinese people access google without being blocked.

 

It's true- if you see a news story on yahoo news about China, most likely you won't be able to find it on google news.

When I tried to get to google (www.google.com) from china, I was always ported to their google counterpart in china...

 

Many computer people I meet in china all liked using google as their choice for searching...

This has nothing to do with if you "like" to use google or not. It's about google signing a deal with the Chinese government not to post negative news on their site about China.

The Chinese Gov is more complete than that. Give credit where credit is do. They do not give access to sites dealing with specific topics that disagree with the official position even if they do not mention the Chinese Government.

Wait, I'm confused. I'm talking about what the site (google) chooses to show on their news. You're talking about what the government is blocking.

 

I think....

 

On sites like yahoo news you can still the the headlines for the article- but the actual article is blocked. On google, those articles don't appear at all- cuz google doesn't post them.

[ed and ying]

The fact of the matter is that the Chinese Gov has had very active and very heavy handed role in evaulating and restricting internet content - Ying could not access news/info sites. Like any dam, their will be leaks. Restricting access to internet content is a big challenge.

 

Maybe the restriction has eased up a bit ? Ying could get through to one of the local realtors sites to view some homes on-line

[bubbafred10]

I cannot access BBC website while I was in China. I guess it's blocked.

 

However they (China's government) must be estatic to learn how well they could control the recent anti-Japanese sentiment and demonstrations by controlling access to internet sites that fuel the fire. It's a great way to control mass psychology and behavior.

[Dan R]

Do you mean "great" as successful or productive or "great" as positive and beneficial? High tech does lend itself to an Orwellian twist and language reflects as well as leads society..