Google Disappears In China

An anonymous reader submits: "The censorship in China was finally getting better since people were 'allowed' to read the CNN news now (except for certain articles). But since this weekend it seems that a new web page has been censored in China. Since this weekend it looks like everyone in China is not 'allowed' to use google.com anymore. google.com was also gaining populairity in China as the better search engine (which also works fine in Chinese). But now I guess it got too popular and thus not allowed. Or does it have anything to do with Yahoo signing the agreement to censor?" Comments to yesterday's post "Real-Time Testing of China's Internet Filters" also noted that Google has gone missing within China.

Comments

Cache

[Stormie]

Surely it's because Google's cache would allow people inside the Great Firewall to read all manner of banned web pages?

the reason

[GoatPigSheep]

Google's cached page feature could give anyone in china the ability to see any censored sites (or at least older copies).

Rumors

[jsse]

There's no source, no reference; just a wild rumors from an anonymous coward. I don't believe /. editors would down to spreading FUD for a few extra hits.

In China there are some search engines like Yam which is google based and use google's queries. Even if you haven't heard of Yam, you might have heard of a China based search engine company suing Yahoo for stealing queries. Yam is more popular than Google here.

If they block Google they might have to block Yam as well, which would then be a real chaos. :)

Re:censorship--it's all the rage

[fireboy1919]

Yeah...why, just the other day, a friend of mine was "censored" when the army came and took him away for publically speaking out against the government. Later, there was a report on the news that he was to be imprisoned, tortured, and shot.

He was part of a rally in Times Square, and they arrested him. Sucks that we live in a country without peaceable assembly.

Wait...I think it was actually someone I didn't know who was killed in Tiananmen square for a pro-democracy demonstration.

I think I got it straight now. The US is NOTHING like China when it comes to censorship. We don't imprison and kill people because we don't like what they say. We certainly don't use full force; on the contrary, our main censorship punishment is fines, or at the very most, a minimum security prison sentence. Of course, you have to consider that we are not trying to censor, our goal is to avoid copyright violations. You can say anything you want, as long as it isn't libel (untrue statement of FACTS - all opinions are allowed).

Don't belittle our freedom or China's suffering by such a comparison.