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> I really like Google, their philosophy, and their ethics.

> I really and truly dislike deception. Its very common, especially when money is involved for > some reason.

For example:

http://images.google.com/images?q=tiananmen

and

http://images.google.cn/images?q=tiananmen

I can't believe it. But it seems, that "Tiananmen" and "tiananmen" give different results. Try http://images.google.cn/images?q=Tiananmen You'll be surprised. In fact, a Chinese would enter instead of letters. And the servers hosting the pictures are not Chinese. Heipi

Google information liberation management team
Google Inc. "Do no evil."

Do no evil, eh? Then how come I get a popup with "Receiving corrupt data." when I load http://www.google.cn/ using Konqueror?

Wrong:

Image results for "tiananmen square"... you'll notice very different results even though both requests originate in the US.

http://images.google.com/images?q=tiananmen+square &hl=en&btnG=Search+Images

http://images.google.cn/images?svnum=10&hl=zh-CN&l r=&cr=countryCN&q=tiananmen+square&btnG=%E6%90%9C% E7%B4%A2

This seems to be happening at the DNS level. "google.cn" resolves to "216.239.39.99", which is assigned to Google in Mountain View CA. A traceroute doesn't show a path to China at all.

Now, interestingly, if you look up "google.cn" in US Google, and get the cached page, you're really seeing the censored view of Google, in its English language edition.

To try this, go to the cached page above, and enter "falun gong". The top search results are "The Cult of Falun Gong", "Falun Gong Evil and Harmful", "Falun Gong Members Found in Slander Case.", "Heretical Cult -- The True Colors of Falun Gong", and "Outlawing Falun Gong Cult". That's obviously the censored version. The search doesn't come up blank. There's no message about censorship. You get the Official Approved Propaganda Results. It's very Orwelllian. And it's not what Google has been telling the US press.

Now try the same search with US Google. You'll get all the real Falun Gong sites, and the Wikipedia entry.

So that's Google's Ministry of Truth in action. Try it yourself.

try for yourself:
http://images.google.cn/images?q=%E5%A4%A9%E5%AE%8 9%E9%97%A8&hl=zh-CN

Chinese web users can see full, uncensored results for their Google search by replacing "&meta=" with "&meta=cr%3DcountryBR" in the URL. Once the string is replaced, the censorship will not affect the results.

This is what a chinese search for Democracy looks like after this method has been applied:

http://www.google.cn/search?hl=zh-CN&q=democracy+c hina&btnG=%E6%90%9C%E7%B4%A2&meta=cr%3DcountryBR

They are saying that they're filtering things. Go look at Google China and do a search for 'oysters' to see what comes up. Then do a search for 'Tiananmen Square' and look at the bottom of the page for a line that doesn't appear on the first search. There, you'll see the following:

That translates roughly to "According to the local laws, regulations and policy, some search results are not shown." (That's cleaned up a bit from Google's own translation services.) Hopefully, this will lead the Chinese to ask what's not being shown and, more importantly, why it's not being shown.

The Chinese people are getting used to the idea of freedom, and the power is slowly slipping out of the hands of the Party as the country reshapes itself. China has always been a bit slow to change, but once a change begins, it's hard to stop it.

"Me fail English? That's unpossible." - Ralph Wiggum

Do a search for Falun Gong using both the regular Google and google.cn. The China version not only censors the results, but pushes propoganda to the top of the search results. "Don't be evil" indeed. I absolutely love Google and won't be switching anytime soon. But maybe for the China version they should just change the "G" in Google to a hammer and sickle.

I'd love to be able to search IMDB of Gracenote from google toolbar

You can search both of those using Firefox's search engine add-ons (along with thousands more)

Not that google's tool bar isn't nice and all - but its much better to use something open source that doesn't censor results for opressive regimes

The following two searches both lead to images of tanks.

http://images.google.cn/images?svnum=10&hl=zh-CN&l r=&q=Tiananmen&btnG=%E6%90%9C%E7%B4%A2

http://images.google.cn/images?svnum=10&hl=zh-CN&l r=&q=Tienanmen&btnG=%E6%90%9C%E7%B4%A2

It appears that they are not filtered out at all, regardless of the correctness of the spelling.

The following two searches both lead to images of tanks.

http://images.google.cn/images?svnum=10&hl=zh-CN&l r=&q=Tiananmen&btnG=%E6%90%9C%E7%B4%A2

http://images.google.cn/images?svnum=10&hl=zh-CN&l r=&q=Tienanmen&btnG=%E6%90%9C%E7%B4%A2

It appears that they are not filtered out at all, regardless of the correctness of the spelling.

less results, but not that different.
Considering in China, Ttiananmen is a place with at lot more events than the 1989 incident.
if you search tiananmen in Chinese on the regular google, you'll get similar results to google.cn.

A better test would be typing (tiananmen incident) in both google.com and google.cn
in google.com,
http://images.google.com/images?svnum=10&hl=en&lr= &q=%E5%A4%A9%E5%AE%89%E9%97%A8%E4%BA%8B%E4%BB%B6&b tnG=Search
it's mostly the 1989 incident with some results on 1976 and 1919 incidents.

while google.cn give a small collection of 1976 and 1919 incidents with 2 links (broken BTW) on the 1989 incident...
http://images.google.cn/images?svnum=10&hl=zh-CN&l r=&cr=countryCN&q=%E5%A4%A9%E5%AE%89%E9%97%A8%E4%B A%8B%E4%BB%B6&btnG=%E6%90%9C%E7%B4%A2
I guess it's more of a censorship than giving bias results.

Now, I can't read chinese, but I get the feeling that it's asking me if I mean "tiananmen" in stead of "tianamen".

At least it's chinese google + images of tanks.

It makes a lot more sense to do your search in Chinese, instead of in English.

http://images.google.cn/images?svnum=10&hl=zh-CN&l r=&cr=countryCN&q=%E5%A4%A9%E5%AE%89%E9%96%80&btnG =%E6%90%9C%E7%B4%A2
vs.
http://images.google.com/images?q=%E5%A4%A9%E5%AE% 89%E9%96%80

The results are about the same, but now they mean something to actual Chinese people.

>Google says they're going to label redacted data as such.

(Note: I stole the following example)
Look at this;
http://images.google.cn/images?hl=zh-CN&q=tiananme n%20square

now look at this;
http://images.google.ca/images?q=tiananmen%20squar e

Now would you know that "due to local laws some search results were excluded" that this was the difference?

>I simply can't fathom why you'd think the Chinese people are so gullible.

They are not stupid; the people are not getting the information they need. You can't ask for something you don't know exists.

For an example;
http://www.asianresearch.org/articles/1722.html

The interesting thing about censoring the internet is how so incredibly hard it is to do.
All you need to do is create a reasonable, censor-friendly website about the subject, get a good ranking, and then switch it overnight.
Example:

http://www.google.cn/search?hl=zh-CN&q=tiananmen+m assacre

Second Link.

If the Chinese government wants to waste their time playing whack-a-mole, let them. There's no possible way they can filter the internet when people truly want to find the information.

> Chinese citizens are probably better off with a censored Google rather than no Google at all.

Sensoring is one thing. Sugar-coating and biasing is another.

If Google were to censor all occurences of 'Tiananmen' and say that the search returned '0' results because of censoring, I'd be likely to agree with you. After all, '0' results doesn't say whether Tiananmen happened or didn't happen.

But Google is hiding the content that speaks negatively of it, and not what speaks positively of it. Compare:
World -- http://images.google.com/images?q=tiananmen
China -- http://images.google.cn/images?q=tiananmen

When all the serce results say Tianenmen didn't happen, and none say it did ... thats when Google spreads biased misinformation. This is what is evil.

you make it sound like the people don't want it. you are wrong, the government is the entity that doesn't want it.

some chinese did want freedom of speech, they went out into tiananmen square and the government killed them.

As it happened

Google magic at work

All you lamers saying the chinese don't want freedom are full of shit, nobody really knows what the chinese want, only what the government wants. All you lamers saying "That's the culture there, that's the law there" don't realise our culture in the west wasn't very democratic until recently (check up when women or blacks got the vote in various western democracies, universal franchise is basically only a 20th century phenomenon). So on the memories of the people who died desiring freedom in tiananmen square, chinese people, wanting freedom, I say fuck you for your rationalisations.

Google isn't respecting the chinese, they are disrespecting them. Google is respecting a small elite who use violence to maintain their power.

AND WTF their culture doesn't support democracy.... ever heard of TAIWAN YOU SACK OF SHIT?! It's quite clear people with chinese culture, language and values can live VERY happily and prosperously under democracy.

go learn some history, and buy yourself a backbone while you are at it.

Free Software stands by this principle too

Let me ask you something. When you look something up on google, and you find a set of reasonable, internally consistent answers, do you keep looking? When you check snopes.com for background on some piece of email that someone forward to you, do you read it and say "naw, that's not right"? Or do you accept those sources as authoritative, and use them as the basis for your future actions and beliefs?

My buddy HorrorIsland posted two links in an earlier discussion about this topic. Nobody else seems to have noticed the post, but I thought they were pretty revealing. So here they are again: a Google image search for "tiananmen" on Chinese Google versus the same search on American Google. Notice any difference?

One way (maybe the only) way to keep information from being free is to flood the minds of inquirers with false information. If google kept itself out of China, people there might not know the truth, but at least they'd know that they did not know. With google there, but only providing half-truths, at least some people will be deceived.

Google has made a bad decision. When and if China every does become free, they'll have to answer for it.

I've been comparing some of the differences between the chinese version and the US one.

Take a look at the Google US search for "Tiawanese Independence. Note that the first result is the Tiawanese Independence Party, and #2 describes how Bush Opposes it.

Now, let's take a look at the french site, to see if the results are similar - "Taiwanese Independence". Very similar results.

Let's try this on .cn: "Taiwanese Independence". Note that the Independence Party is completly gone from the results. Guess they are subversive.

Far more insidious than actually banning certain searches is manipulating the results themselves to tout the party line. Leave a few fringe sites up, so you don't appear to completly control things, but remove any site you consider to truly be a threat. After all, they are doubleplus ungood.

Google is right to change the results of South African searchers looking for images and information about the Sharpeville massacre because in the end it's better for Google to be in the South African apartheid market than out of it, and they'd be out if they let them see images like this. Giving them access to some information is better than none and little bits will slip through because you can't censor everything.

What about the ANC you say? Well the South African government considers them terrorists so it's only really obeying the laws of South Africa to change the results of a search for them.

I think it's clear Google shouldn't boycott the South African government because in the end what can Google really do? What would a boycott ever achieve?

Google is staying true to it's motto "Don't be evil" by making compromises that you absolutists simply don't understand.

Google is right to change the results of South African searchers looking for images and information about the Sharpeville massacre because in the end it's better for Google to be in the South African apartheid market than out of it, and they'd be out if they let them see images like this. Giving them access to some information is better than none and little bits will slip through because you can't censor everything.

What about the ANC you say? Well the South African government considers them terrorists so it's only really obeying the laws of South Africa to change the results of a search for them.

I think it's clear Google shouldn't boycott the South African government because in the end what can Google really do? What would a boycott ever achieve?

Google is staying true to it's motto "Don't be evil" by making compromises that you absolutists simply don't understand.

Can someone say whether this chinese page has a similar notice? http://images.google.cn/images?q=tiananmen
whose results are dramatically different than results for the same search in the USA: http://images.google.com/images?q=tiananmen

Yes, the notice does say that the results were censored.

But that's not the only explanation for the difference:
All localized versions of Google always bias results to display the local sites first. Tiananmen is a place, and a massacre isn't the only thing that ever happened there. It stands to reason that a majority of Chinese sites would mention it for other reasons.

Scary differnce

Compare the two sites:

http://images.google.com/images?q=tiananmen
versus
http://images.google.cn/images?q=tiananmen

I can't read Chinese characters. Can someone say whether this chinese page has a similar notice?

http://images.google.cn/images?q=tiananmen

whose results are dramatically different than results for the same search in the USA:


http://images.google.com/images?q=tiananmen

Instead, try the search "tiananmen square protest 1989" on www.google.cn and see the #1 hit. Certainly that isn't being caught or censored. Don't know if the results differ inside China, although I suspect they might since I have heard the rumor they have firewalls and routers that sniff out terms they don't like. However that wouldn't necessarily be Google's fault.

Since images are hard to filter for content, it makes sense that the Chinese government is trying to limit results to sites they control. What will be more interesting is what happens when they start using Google themselves and can theoretically a.) remove or impose penalties on those sites like the link I posted b.) ask Google to be more restrictive.

I would have preferred Google not give in, but the results could nonetheless be interesting.

http://www.google.cn/search?hl=zh-CN&q=democracy&b tnG=Google+%E6%90%9C%E7%B4%A2&meta= Seeing as the first hit is the wikipedia democracy article, I think you are right on the mark.

Compare the results of a Google image search for "tiananmen" on American Google with an image search on Chinese Google.

Now I had babelfish translate the word democracy into traditional chinese...

Yes, I did the same thing. I translated the word "Democracy" into simplified Chinese and sent it through http://www.google.cn/. There was a disclaimer at the bottom of the page just as you described. I also sent the Google snippets of the first 5 results back through Babelfish. Here are the results:

2006.01.01 decorated corridors stroll the expired archive welcome reprint, asks respectfully to give the source Yang Yinbo...
Zhu , one is located the heavy straight city small small pill , a Sichuan changes the border and nearly depends on the state west slightly , one in is very strange in the multi- people has upstream more than 80,000 person of Qi Jiang first , I in therefore saw is: "The person , the open land spreads, the whole families wildly with sobs" -- -- originally is ancient described a sad world illuminates. ...

Democracy progressive party
Provides information and so on party constitution, party principle and important matter discipline.

Welcome the presence China Democratic National Construction Association!
Welcome to enter the China Democratic National Construction Association website! The China Democratic National Construction Association is mainly the political party which is composed by the economy public figure and other experts, is multi- parties cooperation always... we which the Communist Party of China leads hoped links up well through this window and everywhere persons from all walks of life, helps you to understand Chinese the political party system, understood Chinese the democratic parties, understand the China Democratic National Construction Association. ...

Democracy and legal system
On August 20, 2002 Specially pays attention to the social on-the-spot report rights and interests vertically and horizontally to talk of this and that the law service information picture news people's represententative overseas to read extensively citizen viewpoint present age attorney to awake world wonderful document news in focus sad "the Dongpo elbow" to hit turns "the speeding car party" the Wuhan police uncovers 84 series under the hard wall to ride the motorcycle to rob the document...

* China Association for the Promotion of Democracy *
The people enter the central website.

According to the local law laws and regulations and the policy, the part searches the result not to demonstrate.

--------------

A couple of the results seem like they might be propoganda, but it's hard for me to tell without being fluent in Chinese. Anyone here know enough Chinese to help me out?

I was curious so I did a search for "falun gong" on www.google.cn and did another search on www.google.com, the differences in the results really struck me, the results on .cn came back as very negative towards Falun Gong, and the results on .com were mixed. It could be argued that that a censored search engine is a Propaganda Tool.

foulon gong this is a copycat idea, not as visually stunning:

foulon gong (US)

foulon gong (CN)

Bullshit.

I quick search on google.cn for "Falun Gong" will show the same censored view you get from any other search engine. No obvious indication of what is missed from a non-censored search.

Google .cn search for Falun Gong

For me it isn't as much about Google being "brave", but rather breaking the trust users had with them. They are changing their content on for a personal whim. That whim may be to make money in China. And some people may defend that decision. But, it doesn't get around that fact that Google != Google depending on where you access it.

Right now it is http://images.google.com/images?q=tiananmen+massac re versus http://images.google.cn/images?q=tiananmen+massacr e. When will http://images.google.com/images?q=saddam%20mass%20 grave change to fit the whims of those that run Google? When will those of us in America be deemed by Google to not need to view certain information? Now that they have broken the unwritten search rules of "don't alter the content to fit your personal agenda" ... can we trust the content they do give us?

In Beijing, the capital of the People's Republic of China, between April 15 and June 4, 1989 Tiananmen Square was a site of student protests. The students were protesting communist party/government corruption and economic instability. It was violently suppressed by the government.

I think the difference between an image search google.com and google.cn speak for itself:

• A search for Tiananmen images with Chinese Google.
• A search for Tiananmen images with the English Google.

tiananmen - Google Image Search in China.

no reduction of information????? http://www.google.cn/search?hl=zh-CN&q=mao+little+ girls&btnG try and find information about the very well documented fact that Mao had sex with thousands of young girls in order to be stronger. The first hit is about cute little girls in snow, come on.

Please try this search

This is on China's version of google. You will see the Wikipedia entry on democracy as the first search on the list which is a very interesting read. Now try a search on Tienemen sqaure masacre. You will not find the results you expect, so they are only censoring things that put the govt. in a bad light. They don't block out things like democracy.

Maybe it's just because I can't read Chinese (okay, I don't even have the Chinese character set installed, so I just get a bunch of question marks) but I don't see anything on this page that looks like a "some results have been censored"-type notice. Can any Chinese-reading /.ers verify this?

Just for kicks, I just did a search on www.google.cn for "Falun Gong Chinese Revolution Tianamen Square Freedom of China Anti-Communism"
and the first result was a pdf (html here) called Internet Filtering in China 2004-2005: A Country Study

Similar searches just directed me to Wikipedia.

That's an easy one. Go to www.google.cn, do a search for "Democracy" (Hmm.. slashcode is removing the HTML entities for the Chinese characters.. the unicodes are: 6C11 4E3B 653F 6CBB, convert these into their Chinese characters and paste into google.cn) and see what you get back. Oh, and all the better if you can, or can borrow someone who can, read Chinese.

Compare this American Google image search for "tiananmen square" to the same search in the Chinese Google image search. While a disclaimer is displayed saying that some results were blocked do to Chinese law, the disclaimer does not tell what kind of results were blocked. Hence when the people ask, the Chinese government can just say that the results were pornographic or involved terrorism. So, no, Google definitely has done evil in this case. Stop trying to make excuses for them.

Google is right to change the results of South African searchers looking for images and information about the Sharpeville massacre because in the end it's better for Google to be in the South African apartheid market than out of it, and they'd be out if they let them see images like this. Giving them access to some information is better than none and little bits will slip through because you can't censor everything.

What about the ANC you say? Well the South African government considers them terrorists so it's only really obeying the laws of South Africa to change the results of a search for them.

I think it's clear Google shouldn't boycott the South African government because in the end what can Google really do? What would a boycott ever achieve?

Google is staying true to it's motto "Don't be evil" by making compromises that you absolutists simply don't understand.

Google is right to change the results of South African searchers looking for images and information about the Sharpeville massacre because in the end it's better for Google to be in the South African apartheid market than out of it, and they'd be out if they let them see images like this. Giving them access to some information is better than none and little bits will slip through because you can't censor everything.

What about the ANC you say? Well the South African government considers them terrorists so it's only really obeying the laws of South Africa to change the results of a search for them.

I think it's clear Google shouldn't boycott the South African government because in the end what can Google really do? What would a boycott ever achieve?

Google is staying true to it's motto "Don't be evil" by making compromises that you absolutists simply don't understand.

Hey - you should check out www.google.cn

They do a pretty good job in making sure nothing too traumatic gets through...

Oh, well sometimes...

N/A

Hey - you should check out www.google.cn

They do a pretty good job in making sure nothing too traumatic gets through...

Oh, well sometimes...

N/A

As has already been pointed out, absolute filtering is indeed impossible. The famous tank-man picture might not be the first to come up when searching for Tiananmen, but at the time of this post, it is certainly on the 5th page of results:

http://images.google.cn/images?q=tiananmen&svnum=1 0&hl=zh-CN&lr=&cr=countryCN&start=80&sa=N

Another interesting search result: The first result for "human rights" off of the China portal appears to be the UN's universal declaration.

For those idiots who say that censored information is better than no information; consider these two views of history from Google.COM vs Google.CN. http://images.google.com/images?q=tiananmen http://images.google.cn/images?q=tiananmen The censorship completely changes history.

For those idiots who say that censored information is better than no information; consider these two views of history from Google.COM vs Google.CN. http://images.google.com/images?q=tiananmen http://images.google.cn/images?q=tiananmen The censorship completely changes history.