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I am confused. Google already has a censored search engine for China at http://www.google.cn/ that has been operating for over a decade. What new ethical question is being raised here? Why are these Google employees suddenly upset now but they weren't last week?

Yes! That is why they walked away from China.

They're back baby!

google.cn?

I agree; they basically made it idiot-proof.

Link: http://www.google.cn/

Google.cn is *not* censored! It's just a link to the uncensored HK version!

http://www.google.cn/

The only thing they "caved in" is they changed an automatic redirect to a full page link! How is that evil in any way? "Oh no, people must click once to be redirected! The horror, the horror!"

Or you could, you know, open http://www.google.cn/ as see that it's NOT a censored version, it's a link for the UNCENSORED HK version.

If someone is censoring it won't be Google itself - so yes, they have kept their "mantra" intact without closing Google China.

Well, from Beijing:

surfing to http://google.cn/ will show you something that looks like google's homepage, only, it's just an image of the homepage. Clicking on it will lead you to google.com.hk. (the version in simplified Chinese characters)
What changed a couple of weeks back is that they do not redirect you automatically, you just end up on this landing page.

Interesting to note: passing a query directly to google.cn (from the search box in firefox), will just execute the query on google.com.hk

I agree completely. This is a clever albeit transparent trick on the part of Google to let Chinese save face. Make no mistake, China didn't want Google to leave completely, that would've been an international PR disaster (apart from the job loss and other collateral damages). Naturally, Google didn't want to go either, loosing all the business opportunities in China. Most importantly, those services that they don't have to filter anyway, like music, product search, etc. So Google pretended to do something and yield to the Chinese government's demands, and China gladly accepted this opportunity to get out of this impasse (their license to operate in China covers everything, not only search). There's a reason I use pretended - I mean what Google did is very very close to nothing, just check out http://www.google.cn/ - and click anywhere on the screen. This "concession" is a joke, and it was a dangerous gamble on Google's part, since depending on how you look at it, this can be seen as China loosing face (actually bowing to Google's demands) instead the other way around. It also shows the kind of bargaining power Google has. For what exactly did China gain? Well, see for yourself, just goo ahead and visit google.cn and search for something :))

I agree completely. This is a clever albeit transparent trick on the part of Google to let Chinese save face. Make no mistake, China didn't want Google to leave completely, that would've been an international PR disaster (apart from the job loss and other collateral damages). Naturally, Google didn't want to go either, loosing all the business opportunities in China. Most importantly, those services that they don't have to filter anyway, like music, product search, etc. So Google pretended to do something and yield to the Chinese government's demands, and China gladly accepted this opportunity to get out of this impasse (their license to operate in China covers everything, not only search). There's a reason I use pretended - I mean what Google did is very very close to nothing, just check out http://www.google.cn/ - and click anywhere on the screen. This "concession" is a joke, and it was a dangerous gamble on Google's part, since depending on how you look at it, this can be seen as China loosing face (actually bowing to Google's demands) instead the other way around. It also shows the kind of bargaining power Google has. For what exactly did China gain? Well, see for yourself, just goo ahead and visit google.cn and search for something :))

Including myself I know 3 regular slashdot posters in China.
Right now the google.cn front page is one big image (which looks like a variant of the google basic page) link to
http://www.google.com.hk/webhp?hl=zh-CN&sourceid=cnhp

with three text links to
http://www.google.cn/music/homepage?sourceid=cnhp
http://translate.google.cn/?sourceid=cnhp#
and
http://www.google.cn/products?sourceid=cnhp
underneath it.
The only other item on the page is a small text link to http://www.miibeian.gov.cn/, which looks to be a license or copyright statement.

Including myself I know 3 regular slashdot posters in China.
Right now the google.cn front page is one big image (which looks like a variant of the google basic page) link to
http://www.google.com.hk/webhp?hl=zh-CN&sourceid=cnhp

with three text links to
http://www.google.cn/music/homepage?sourceid=cnhp
http://translate.google.cn/?sourceid=cnhp#
and
http://www.google.cn/products?sourceid=cnhp
underneath it.
The only other item on the page is a small text link to http://www.miibeian.gov.cn/, which looks to be a license or copyright statement.

Including myself I know 3 regular slashdot posters in China.
Right now the google.cn front page is one big image (which looks like a variant of the google basic page) link to
http://www.google.com.hk/webhp?hl=zh-CN&sourceid=cnhp

with three text links to
http://www.google.cn/music/homepage?sourceid=cnhp
http://translate.google.cn/?sourceid=cnhp#
and
http://www.google.cn/products?sourceid=cnhp
underneath it.
The only other item on the page is a small text link to http://www.miibeian.gov.cn/, which looks to be a license or copyright statement.

but there is a button to easily switch

The "button" is actually the entire page except a few links. Try for yourself.

Read the article. Then actually visit google.cn. Google managed to find a loophole in it all: they still offer uncensored searching (via their site in Hong Kong) and there is no site search capability on their China-based site. It comes down to a remarkably silly technicality that, somehow, China decided to approve.

It's funny how an automatic redirect isn't acceptable, whereas the current landing page approach really just requires one extra click. And the redirect button fills most of the screen (and looks like a search window, so you think you're clicking in the box to put your cursor there and type something, but it's actually a link).

http://google.cn/ if you want to check it out for yourself.

So subtle a difference, really, from a practical point of view. Yet this is acceptable where the other approach wasn't.

We have therefore been looking at possible alternatives, and instead of automatically redirecting all our users, we have started taking a small percentage of them to a landing page on Google.cn that links to Google.com.hk—where users can conduct web search or continue to use Google.cn services like music and text translate, which we can provide locally without filtering. This approach ensures we stay true to our commitment not to censor our results on Google.cn and gives users access to all of our services from one page.

Over the next few days we’ll end the redirect entirely, taking all our Chinese users to our new landing page—and today we re-submitted our ICP license renewal application based on this approach.

It's kind of funny, the "landing page" is a false image of a search box and when you click anywhere on the page, you go to Google Hong Kong. How this is okay as opposed to a redirect, I'll never know ... and once that page starts eventually taking users to unfiltered results of Tiananmen Square, I think the Chinese Government will take a few more steps to stop it.

Of course it looks like ibtimes has a policy that only allows them to link to more ibtimes sites instead of -- you know -- the original source of all their quotes.

We have therefore been looking at possible alternatives, and instead of automatically redirecting all our users, we have started taking a small percentage of them to a landing page on Google.cn that links to Google.com.hk—where users can conduct web search or continue to use Google.cn services like music and text translate, which we can provide locally without filtering. This approach ensures we stay true to our commitment not to censor our results on Google.cn and gives users access to all of our services from one page.

Over the next few days we’ll end the redirect entirely, taking all our Chinese users to our new landing page—and today we re-submitted our ICP license renewal application based on this approach.

It's kind of funny, the "landing page" is a false image of a search box and when you click anywhere on the page, you go to Google Hong Kong. How this is okay as opposed to a redirect, I'll never know ... and once that page starts eventually taking users to unfiltered results of Tiananmen Square, I think the Chinese Government will take a few more steps to stop it.

Of course it looks like ibtimes has a policy that only allows them to link to more ibtimes sites instead of -- you know -- the original source of all their quotes.

June Fourth Incident.

Google already has the China domain referred to the Hong Kong domain http://www.google.cn/

Think that many have to do with their algorithms rather than censoring? When you search for sensitive terms atm it gives proper results, so maybe the register is being a bit jumpy?

tank man
falun gong

Seems to be right.... The reason that LESS images of tank man show up in the .cn version compared to the .com version is likely that the tank man image is not featured as commonly in Chinese media. This makes perfectly good sense, and really should be obvious. The falun gong results are nearly EXACTLY the same.

Think that many have to do with their algorithms rather than censoring? When you search for sensitive terms atm it gives proper results, so maybe the register is being a bit jumpy?

tank man
falun gong

Seems to be right.... The reason that LESS images of tank man show up in the .cn version compared to the .com version is likely that the tank man image is not featured as commonly in Chinese media. This makes perfectly good sense, and really should be obvious. The falun gong results are nearly EXACTLY the same.

If you search for tank man directly then you get thousands of results including 4 pictures of him in front of the tanks at the top of the results page.

I have attempted to post the reports that Google has backed down in China and re-enabled Chinese search result filtering in Google.cn despite of the lack of real actions from the Chinese government in the few two days, but /. editors keep refusing to put this relevant in the front page. This story casts a doubt on Google's stance, motive and commitment. Right, how can we be critical of our new found American hero defending the precious "freedom" and fighting the "evil" China? How can a hero backing down to the evil? Hero can't make fundamental principle error, or you are not allowed to know when it does. How could the evil have not taken any real evil action on this particular matter? It would hurt our national morale, and so we should do self-censoring and forbidding to put it in the front page of any Western media outlet.

(Even your WSJ story does not mention that google has re-enabled filtering; while every Western media reported the (now temporary) suspension after Google announcement. It is oversea Chinese media that reported it and I picked up and verified with the exact same Chinese query I tried right after their temporary suspension back then.)

Generally, the Chinese government does not censor most English contents but almost all Chinese contents.

Looks pretty un-censored to me. images:tiananmen square

This is a bit off-topic but I have nowhere else to post this. I have attempted to post the reports that Google has backed down in China and re-enabled search result filtering in Google.cn despite of the lack of REAL actions from the Chinese government in the last two days, but /. editors keep refusing to put this relevant in the headline. Right, how can we be critical of our new found American hero defending the precious "freedom" and fighting the evil China? How can a hero backing down to the evil China? Hero can't make fundamental principle error, or you are not allowed to know when it does. Can someone find a way to post this news report (which can be verified search "June 4" in google.cn and which I can't find any English language sources)?!

1,890,000 results on google http://www.google.cn/search?hl=zh-CN&newwindow=1&q=tianamen+square+massacre&start=90&sa=N
174 results on baidu.com http://www.baidu.com/s?wd=tianamen+square+massacre

yes, that's right, 174!
there is a line on the google result page that says:

'In compliance to the local laws and regulations, some search results are not displayed"

Whether you think Google's initial decision to comply with censorship in China is right or not, I think their decision now makes the initial compliance worthwhile. With it Google now has enough influence to the Chinese that the news is big enough to spread to everyone in China. (Remember it doesn't matter how much we know, more important is how much the Chinese citizen get from this news) Google also has enough market share that its retreat can greatly disrupt existing market.

Although there are certainly still a lot of ignorant PRC Chinese that pissed me off, I am very glad to see a lot of PRC Chinese that appreciate Google and disagree with the censorship in China. Many of them know about sensitive incidents like tiananmen. I believe thanks to the "negative" effect of the great censorship effort by the government, some younger Chinese become more aware of such incidents by actively comparing search results of these incidents whenever censorship related news are reported.

I'm quite surprise to not see any Slashdot comment mentioning this. Within moments the news were reported, large amount of visitors are attracted to Google China's headquarter to present "illegal" flowers to Google. The new term "fei1 fa3 xian4 hua1" (Slashdot can't accept my chinese character) is used and no surprising, this term has been banned by Baidu et al. There isn't much you can see from the English Google News, but with the chinese keyword, you can get much more informative results.

(disclaimer: I'm a Chinese but not from PRC)

Indeed it would:
google images: [liusishijian]

Appears to still be cesored. http://www.google.cn/search?hl=zh-CN&oq=tiananmen&ei=ZQFOS5iEIZDQM9e07PkM&sa=X&oi=pinyin&resnum=0&ct=result&cd=1&ved=0CA0QBSgA&q=%E5%A4%A9%E5%AE%89%E9%97%A8&spell=1

Still displays "According to local laws, regulations and policies, some search results are not shown.".

http://images.google.cn/images?hl=zh-CN&q=tiananmen%20square%20massacre&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi

Because I sure see some pictures of tanks if you add the word massacre to that search.

Here is the search with the terms used in the image you linked.

Check this image from the article: http://publicaddress.net/assets/img/OnPoint/100113-1720-Google-NZ.jpg with what it is now... http://images.google.cn/images?q=Tiananmen%20Square&langpair=en%7Czh&hl=zh-CN&sa=N&tab=Di (I couldnt find the exact symbols the guy used, so I'm not sure if it counts... although I know the last search was very different hours ago.)

Google.cn fails the basic Chinese Censorship Test: http://www.google.cn/search?hl=zh-CN&source=hp&q=tiananmen+square&btnG=Google+%E6%90%9C%E7%B4%A2&aq=2z&oq=ti

although the results are still slightly fitered, you are searching incorrectly.

the chinese people refer to the tiananmen square protest as the june fourth incident.

Just compare
the cn version with the one that the rest of the world sees

that's because it's "tiEnanmen", not "tiAnanmen"

http://images.google.cn/images?hl=zh-CN&safe=active&um=1&sa=1&q=tienanmen+square+tank+man&btnG=Google+%E6%90%9C%E7%B4%A2&aq=f&oq=&start=0

Erm... Google images search for tiananmen square tank man in china:

http://images.google.cn/images?hl=en&safe=active&um=1&sa=1&q=tiananmen+square+tank+man&btnG=Search&aq=f&oq=&start=0

And on google.co.uk:

http://images.google.co.uk/images?hl=en&safe=active&um=1&sa=1&q=tiananmen+square+tank+man&btnG=Search&aq=f&oq=&start=0

No, the available content is different:

Google USA
http://www.google.com/search?q=falun+gong+site%3Afalundafa.org

Google China
http://www.google.cn/search?q=falun+gong+site%3Afalundafa.org

Google Sweden
http://www.google.se/search?q=falun+gong+site%3Afalundafa.org

Google USA and Sweden do report different results, but at least they actually have results!

I don't speak Chinese, but it seems not to be censored. For instance, the last line on this results page says (putting it through Google Translate) "According to local laws, regulations and policies, some search results are not shown".

(The query is for Tienanmen Square, I think, which I used Wikipedia to "translate". The google.com.hk results for the same query are very different).

There's still search differences though

http://www.google.cn/search?hl=zh-CN&q=falun+gong

is quite different to

http://www.google.com/search?hl=zh-CN&q=falun+gong

Though either does a lot better than Yahoo!

http://search.cn.yahoo.com/s?p=falun+gong&v=web&pid=ysearch

I think you need to search it in Chinese. (The English-speakers in China already know about the censorship).

I don't know any Chinese, but using the title of the article on zh.Wikipedia and an image search: .cn .hk

Results on Google.cn
http://www.google.cn/search?hl=zh-CN&ei=KY5NS8nNCJS0NpHW9OgM&sa=X&oi=spell&resnum=0&ct=result&cd=1&ved=0CBIQBSgA&q=tiananmen+square&spell=1

Results on Google.com
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ei=745NS-y6H5DitgPxuInXBw&sa=X&oi=spell&resnum=0&ct=result&cd=1&ved=0CBMQBSgA&q=tiananmen+square&spell=1

I wonder if people will be making similar comparisons to Australia in the future?

http://www.google.cn/search?hl=zh-CN&source=hp&q=tianamen+square+massacre currently gives 1,350,000 results. If it's also doing that on the other side of the great firewall of China, then they have already done something BIG.

Ok, now try that with the right spelling of "tiananmen", and you'll see that there's only 41,000 results left... (Not to mention that the most effective part of the Great Firewall is the automatic connection reset for clients where this sort of string is detected in the traffic - which of course only happens inside of China.)

Google defies Chinese internet censors Times Online - Jane Macartney - 59 minutes ago Images of students crushed under tanks in the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown are available for the first time on Google's China server.

Wow. Did not expect that so soon. It's almost as if they had already taken steps. At first I thought you might be wrong but after I found the article and checked for myself. Wow. "Tank man" is indeed available on Google.cn's images, as are others related to the massacre. It's not quite what the English version is but it's not like it was a while ago when I searched on google.cn. Some bureaucrats in China are def. shitting kittens right about now. According to this chinese article, google switched the censoring off earlier today, apparently without warning. In the article are pictures of the flowers mentioned.

http://www.google.cn/search?hl=zh-CN&source=hp&q=tianamen+square+massacre currently gives 1,350,000 results. If it's also doing that on the other side of the great firewall of China, then they have already done something BIG.

Not true. The secure connection is established before the HTTP request (containing the URL) is transmitted.

For added irony, I'll refer you to Google.cn for an explanation.

- China has the Great Firewall.
- The US has illegal wiretaps.

Tiananmen Square vs. Tiananmen Square

Illegal wiretaps are nasty invasions of privacy and are a wrong that the U.S. government committed. You can read about and debate them in thousands of blog posts and news articles, none of which are censored. That's how you know about it. The same cannot be said of many things within China.

Cultural relativism is the most lazy mental posture there is. "Hey, we're all different and about equally evil." Then it's ok to drift through life, I guess?

Humans and human institutions make mistakes and commit evil acts sometimes--including the U.S. The value of the U.S. system is the freedom to acknowledge, publicize, and debate them, and effect change. Since 2006 we've switched out the leadership of our legislative and executive branches--against the will of the incumbents. Of course I won't be surprised if you apply a similar cultural relativistic point of view to that too: "both parties are the same, they're equally evil." How convenient.

Here is the complete results for traditional vs simplified:

First traditional:

Google Australia:
http://images.google.com.au/images?hl=en&source=hp&q=%E5%A4%A9%E5%AE%89%E9%96%80&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi
Google China:
http://images.google.cn/images?hl=zh-CN&source=hp&q=%E5%A4%A9%E5%AE%89%E9%96%80&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi

Simplified:

Australia
http://images.google.com.au/images?hl=en&q=%E5%A4%A9%E5%AE%89%E9%97%A8&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi
China
http://images.google.cn/images?hl=zh-CN&um=1&sa=1&q=%E5%A4%A9%E5%AE%89%E9%97%A8&btnG=%E6%90%9C%E7%B4%A2%E5%9B%BE%E7%89%87

I'm guessing google is returning pages based on the language you search in. When you write tianmen in traditional characters it's ambiguous whether the language is Japanese or Chinese (Same characters, same code-points), so the results are a mix. Note the two particularly bloody pictures in the google.com.au search are from Japanese sites.

Heres a Google Taiwan search in traditional characters:
http://images.google.com.tw/images?hl=zh-TW&q=%E5%A4%A9%E5%AE%89%E9%96%80&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi&gbv=1&ei=dv0IS9SvMoyVkAWF8IisAw
As you can see some bloody images come up.

Anyway, I imagine the root of the problem is simply that there's not a lot of discussion about this amongst mainland Chinese (I.e. people who would write in simplified characters).

Finally, as for your question about Mainland Chinese being able to read both traditional and simplified characters well it depends on the character. However, educated Mainland Chinese people that I've meet have generally been able to read any Characters I could write (Me writing the Japanese versions of them, which are generally traditional characters). The inverse is also true I can recognise many characters written in their Mainland China simplified form. In the case of Tianmen, I would be amazed if they couldn't.

Here is the complete results for traditional vs simplified:

First traditional:

Google Australia:
http://images.google.com.au/images?hl=en&source=hp&q=%E5%A4%A9%E5%AE%89%E9%96%80&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi
Google China:
http://images.google.cn/images?hl=zh-CN&source=hp&q=%E5%A4%A9%E5%AE%89%E9%96%80&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi

Simplified:

Australia
http://images.google.com.au/images?hl=en&q=%E5%A4%A9%E5%AE%89%E9%97%A8&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi
China
http://images.google.cn/images?hl=zh-CN&um=1&sa=1&q=%E5%A4%A9%E5%AE%89%E9%97%A8&btnG=%E6%90%9C%E7%B4%A2%E5%9B%BE%E7%89%87

I'm guessing google is returning pages based on the language you search in. When you write tianmen in traditional characters it's ambiguous whether the language is Japanese or Chinese (Same characters, same code-points), so the results are a mix. Note the two particularly bloody pictures in the google.com.au search are from Japanese sites.

Heres a Google Taiwan search in traditional characters:
http://images.google.com.tw/images?hl=zh-TW&q=%E5%A4%A9%E5%AE%89%E9%96%80&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi&gbv=1&ei=dv0IS9SvMoyVkAWF8IisAw
As you can see some bloody images come up.

Anyway, I imagine the root of the problem is simply that there's not a lot of discussion about this amongst mainland Chinese (I.e. people who would write in simplified characters).

Finally, as for your question about Mainland Chinese being able to read both traditional and simplified characters well it depends on the character. However, educated Mainland Chinese people that I've meet have generally been able to read any Characters I could write (Me writing the Japanese versions of them, which are generally traditional characters). The inverse is also true I can recognise many characters written in their Mainland China simplified form. In the case of Tianmen, I would be amazed if they couldn't.