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Goo-do-no-evil-gle also has a stake in Baidu, which conveniently offers painless search for MP3 downloads.

I guess it's better to be there (do a bit of evil) than not be there (no evil).

From the article: "Western technology companies could have a powerful case if they acted as a group in telling China that they are under tremendous consumer and political pressure to stick up for free expression."

You mean like countless protests, threats of sanction on China's poor treatment to basic human rights, which result in nothing? Or do you mean North-Korea or Iran's nucular plan despite pressures from western countries?

I guess it's time for parents to wake up and realize that their children have grown up and are strong and indenpendant enough to ignore or repel parental guidance. These parents can either act nice in order to live peacefully with their children, or get kicked out of the house.

wow.. having born and lived in China i know what this means for google.. profit.. you have to understand that it's not impossible for people to get books or other literature restricted by the goverment. before the internet, the CCP would put restriction on a book (a banned book in other words) and the next day there will be millions of people wanting to read that book, regardless of if it's good or not. when CCP put restrictions on the internet, there was no way around that for a normal person. another thing i have to mention is that the Chinese search engine is http://baidu.com/ everyone in China uses it like us using google. google is not popular there compared to BaiDu. so with this uncensor, there will be millions of chinese flowing to google in order to read uncensored information on the internet. and since google is not a Chinese businese (unlike BaiDu) the CCP can't do anything about it. so google's influence in China will finaly increase... all i can do is applaud google's business tactics... wow... /offtopic/rant as far as the "evil communists" goes, it's not all evil. the person over threw the Qing Dynasty, and made China democracy country, Sun yat-sen, was the leader of china when he wanted to have 2 kinds of goverment parties. one is democracy and one is communism. he believed that people should have freedom but not complete freedom because that would cause alot of problems. thats how the communist party came into power, before that they were a tiny little political party that had no power. when Sun yat-sun died he gave the position of president to Shiang Kai-shek (as you can see China wasn't completly democracy back then, probably because a voting would have caused too much trouble in a already poor country and some people doesn't even know who was their leader and stuff) and Shiang kai-shek hated the Communitst. he ordered secret assasination of communist party members which furthur worsen the relationship of the 2 parties. so the communist party members basicly said "why are we waiting to be assasinated? why dont we just rebel?" so thats how they started the war and then the japanese started attacking china and the rest is history. so as you can see, the communist struggle to power was hard and when they were finaly in power, there were still lots of pro-democracy people around and letting the democracy party people having a taste of their own medicine, they started torturing the democracy party people and murdered lots of innocent people, because they came to power because the KMT gave them power, they learned the lesson of the KMT and never gave any other part in China significant power, just to establish themselves as the official goverment in the people's eyes. Shiang Kai-shek escaped to Taiwan and established his own democracy goverment there (and i should metion that he purged all of his old KMT party members form mainland) , and later died and the presidency to his son (not as democracy as he say he is :P ). if Shiang Kai-shek didn't decide to assasinate the communist party members we might actualy see an example of a democracy goverment AND a communist goverment co-exist and govern on country together. where the people have freedom, but not too much that it endangers the country's existance. /end rant

I wish Chinese had guts to publish their own satellite images at baidu, including areas censored on Google Earth (U.S./others military bases), thus saving Google from these pressures. Gee, at least our beautiful planet should be freely photographable.

Why are we so feared of terrorism? Why aren't, let's say, Swedes, as massively scared? Let's see.. well.. there just isn't any terrorist threat in Sweden. There isn't terrorist threat because generally nobody has any extremely bad experiences about the country in any aspect. From the internal point of view: Excellent public education and social security provides everyone fair chances to pursue one's dreams in life. From the external point of view: Swedish people are generous and unselfish when it comes to foreign aid, the number of people whose sister was blowed up by Swedish government is relatively very small, their government transparency has guaranteed human civilization that it hasn't set up secret torture centers all around the world, and they generally play a lot for the common interest, at least comparing to most nations. Now, I cannot really say any of the previous things when it comes to this nation... :P

Here in America people have a weird idea that terrorists were some sort of natural born devils who choose their target for no clear reason. The fact is, people ready to blow up things for killing a few American fellows are just a side-effect of extreme global imbalance in economics while we not only let them have nothing meaningful to do (like studying or working) but also go bully them and try to rule for the interests of our own wealth. Only way to remove terrorism against us is to help at balancing the economies (like, giving resources to global education, removing protectionism and our ip laws devastating economies starting from nothing). Alternatively we can build a fortness and set up access control everywhere, that will work to some degree, but...

La Mian literally translates as pulled noodles. They're a specialty of northwestern China and incredible delicious, but to really appreciate them you have to see them made.

The noodle chef starts with a well worked ball of dough, rolls it into a rope like thing, takes one end in each hand, pulls it as wide as his armspan while swinging it up and down, doubles it over between his hands and repeats until it's been stretched thin enough. I realize my description doesn't do it justice, but to see it is to be amazed. It's usually served in a bowl of beef broth with meat, cilantro and onions, but you can get 'em fried too. There's nothing like handmade noodles.

Pictures:1 2 3(this one's not your ordinary la mian) 4 (the first frame gives a good feel for the process)

Don't know about more recent versions (I thought they closed shop a long time ago) but their older versions didn't have any spyware. Their software at the time didn't support multiple sources (ala Limewire or Ares) so I stopped using it. Lately I've used http://mp3.baidu.com/ or google filetype:mp3 for faster downloads.

http://mp3.baidu.com/m?f=ms&tn=baidump3&ct=1342177 28&lf=&rn=&word=maroon+5

http://mp3.baidu.com/ then select "MP3" checkbutton. Enter author or title, get direct links to MP3 downloads. Wish Google had something like this! :D

You're not getting results because you're not spelling it correctly. It's tiananmen, not tianamen.

Spelled correctly, Baidu shows 777 results. Google gets 50100.

... and then it's obvious that Baidu is censored. Every page on google describes the event, while in Baidu, it leads to a "no page exist" Wikipedia error page. (Either intentionally or accidentally, there's an unpreventable extra quotation mark appended to end of result in Wikipedia (even if you don't use any quotation marks), preventing you from seeing the site.)

And after the two wikipedia error pages, you only get very short snippets. Oh, and the third result got through. I think the reason that it slipped through is that someone cleverly named the thread on a bulletin board "stir fried tomatoes with eggs" in Chinese.

The poster is right. The chinese service searches for MP3s and provides download links: http://mp3.baidu.com/m?f=ms&rn=&tn=baidump3&ct=134 217728&word=beatles&submit=%B0%D9%B6%C8%CB%D1%CB%F 7&lm=-1

I can't think how great these news are for RIAA...

Baidu allows you to click through without any issues, but is mostly censored. So If you're doing a search for COMMUNISM and CHINA, most likely you'll be brought to a nice propaganda site about Communisims superiority over Democracy rather than history untethered and nuetral

hmmm... an "I whore for art" web site isn't exactly my idea of what would be superiority of communism...

Between Google and Baidu, which is truly the lesser of the two evils?

We always allude to "our" search engines because they don't suffer the same fate as Chinese web-produce - massive censorship. One just has to search Baidu for Tianamen Square Massacre. There are 3 (pro-Chinese) results. This is unlike Google that provides over 750 results for the same search term.

But then, Google isn't much better. One just has to look up Google for anything that could contrive the plans of a business, and the corporate entity will use the DMCA to somehow ban the disfavourable content.

Of course, I'd pick Google anyday. But it's hypocritical to state that Baidu is this horrid entity due to its censoring, when in fact this is common practice over here.

their about page says "Baidu, whose literal meaning is hundreds of times, represents persistent search for the ideal.".

"100 times" is what they have printed on their website (disclaimer: I'm reading it by way of Japanese -- yay for borrowing half the language from China -- and that character can mark degrees in Japanese as well as times). They also have an official explanation of where their name comes from which is written in English for the benefit of their investors. Apparently its from a classical Chinese poem about seeing something beautiful one hundred times.

"100 times" is what they have printed on their website (disclaimer: I'm reading it by way of Japanese -- yay for borrowing half the language from China -- and that character can mark degrees in Japanese as well as times). They also have an official explanation of where their name comes from which is written in English for the benefit of their investors. Apparently its from a classical Chinese poem about seeing something beautiful one hundred times.

It doesn't even know where Slashdot is!

I can't find slashdot anywhere in the first few pages, but Google shows up a lot.

Yahoo, as seen http://baidu.com/clients/index.htmlhere is listed as one of their clients? I don't read Chinese at all but seems quite the coincidence since they released the article. Yahoo? A search engine's client? I don't get it.

TG should've written "The Associated Press has an article about a recent study (English PDF) released by a Chinese Internet research group that shows Google losing market share to their Chinese rival, Baidu.com. From the article: 'The survey, conducted by the Beijing-based China Internet Network Information Center, reported that Baidu.com Inc. boosted its market share in Beijing by 10.8 percentage points to 52 percent. Google Inc.'s share was at 33 percent, as the American Internet search engine kept its customer base steady while the overall market grew, said the survey, seen Tuesday on CNNIC's Web site.'" Factual analysis or results driven by self interest? Or just another interesting article posted to Slashdot with editorial opinions but no editorial checking?

The report itself has a pie chart with the following breakdown: Baidu 51.5%, Google 32.9%, Sohu 4.6%, Sino 4.0%, Yahoo 3.7%, and 3.3% other in Beijing; 43.9% Baidu vs. 38.2% in Shanghai; and 48.0% Baidu vs. 28.7% Google in Guangzhou.

However, the next page breaks down searches by category, and Baidu is only in the lead (55% vs. 15% Google) in downloadable music. In all other categories, Google is in the lead. Indeed, 60% of users who use Google primary and Baidu secondary say that the reason is Baidu's music search.

This confirms that Google is a better (more popular at least) search engine, of course, but Baidu is either better at searching Chinese music or, as another poster said, Baidu can link to MP3s without the RIAA being able to do anything about it.

Who says you can't use it in English?
http://mp3.baidu.com/m?f=ms&rn=&tn=baidump3&ct=134 217728&word=sublime
Maybe not though:
http://news.baidu.com/ns?word=ten+feet+per+year+in +furlongs+per+fortnight

Who says you can't use it in English?
http://mp3.baidu.com/m?f=ms&rn=&tn=baidump3&ct=134 217728&word=sublime
Maybe not though:
http://news.baidu.com/ns?word=ten+feet+per+year+in +furlongs+per+fortnight

Another thing that most people don't think about is that Chinese people are proud of their country. This comes as a strange thought to most people who went through university indoctrination in the West, but Chinese people will prefer a Chinese solution when one is available. Even if it's a poorer alternative than the foreign one (it'll get better if we use it, they think).

And as someone else pointed out, baidu.com has links to "multimedia" (i.e. pirated movies) that google would get sued over. I mean, look at their site, it's got "mp3 search" right on the front page. And check out this site, it's got plenty of entire albums available for your listening pleasure, and it's a legitimate site in China.

Google is not collaborating with the Chinese government. They are working, as the Chinese people, within the laws of the land. And again, if Google refused, who cares? The largest search engine of China, baidu.com must work within the laws as they are based in China. The only ones to lose out from Google refusing to obey the laws would be Google and Chinese users of Google. The government couldn't care less (Google is an American company after all).

This story seems to me a bit of an understatement. I have only known Baidu as a source of pirated material, specifically mp3.baidu.com which is a search engine for any kind of music, kind of like a Chinese Napster.
Knowing this I was a bit suprised to hear Google is a shareholder for this company. Actually, most Chinese websites contain pirated material, for example, the university where I work has movies and mp3s right on their website for anyone's enjoyment! Also, almost every city has a local website that is full of every new movie and can be watched as a stream. They are so popular that there are always queues on the weekends.

Anyways, FTA:

Beijing New Picture Film Co., copyright owner of ``House of Flying Daggers,'' filed suit last month against Baidu for allowing users to download the movie for a fee...

So what they're saying is, they should've let them download it for free, right?

Anyways, FTA:

Beijing New Picture Film Co., copyright owner of ``House of Flying Daggers,'' filed suit last month against Baidu for allowing users to download the movie for a fee...

So what they're saying is, they should've let them download it for free, right?

Try using This Page to search for movies on www.baidu.com. Inside the results there is a section for watch / downloads. maybe this is what the problem is. I tried to download but it required a username / password but the ability is there (apparently it's a paid service using baidu (hundred degree) coins).

http://www.baidu.com/s?wd=%C3%F1%D6%F7&cl=3

Try it for yourself.

The great grandparent likes to affirm himself anonymously, methinks. After all, convincing Firefox to raise an error is a suspiciously clunky form of censorship.

baidu = hundred degrees.
bai = hundred / du = degrees

ling = zeroes

bailing = hundred zeroes which is the definition of googal. ;p

anyway, linkified for the lazy:
http://baidu.com/

http://mp3.baidu.com/

It actually works really well even for english songs. A search for usher bring sup his songs.

Can anyone here tell me what Baidu.com is actually like as a search engine

It looks a lot like this. http://www.baidu.com/.

Music downloads are still a very long way from being as convenient as you make out, and they could be. I'm sure the more convenient they get, the more they will eat into traditional retail.

Music downloading is already extremely convenient in China, as I know from living there most of the time due to my business. China's most popular search engine, Baidu.com has an MP3 search feature built right in and you can find just about any popular Chinese music on it, and many western songs too. Everyone uses it, and download speeds tend to be extremely fast, which is quite impressive considering China's large online population.

I don't believe this will have a large impact on Chinese artists however; the fact is that Chinese people have always been able to purchase pirated music CDs for a couple dollars each. Stores selling such music are everywhere in China, even on the campuses of public universities. Clearly the ability to download music won't change much from the Chinese artists' perspective, and might actually help them by increasing the popularity of their music.