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Chinese Sites Band Together To Counter Google

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the capitalist-running-dogs dept.

egoff writes "The China Search Alliance is a coalition of over 200 Chinese internet portals that have joined together to try to capture the Chinese search market before Google can "invade." Started by China.com.cn, an official government portal, the CSA has now expanded to include mainly commercial, non-governmental, Chinese sites. According to Guangzhou-based New Express News, Google has already approached several Chinese firms about forming a partnership. Being that it started in the government, this looks like a tool for greater control while appearing to be in open competition with Google."

7 of 295 comments (clear)

  1. Over-reactive by Coplan · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Google has a corner on the market. Yeah? Big deal! If you're Yahoo or Lycos or AOL, I could imagine why you'd be upset.

    But a bunch of portal sites organized with the Chinese Government?

    What benefit do they have? What are they afraid of? I could understand if they wanted to have a Chinese-only search-bot. But even still, there's little point in that. That limits your resources drastically.

  2. Re:What good would a search engine do in China? by Uber+Banker · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I agree, that's the crux, a search engine controlling (by the government) access to information. Where as here we have corporates controlling the government and media, and Google calling corporate press releases news... Hmmmmmmmmm

  3. Re:This is a Good Thing(TM) - click for explainati by serano · · Score: 2, Interesting

    If China's search can compete, unfairly or fairly, it won't be a mere arms race - only good can come of this.

    But will they compete, or will they block Google from the country once their search engine is large enough?

  4. Interesting... by Acidic_Diarrhea · · Score: 2, Interesting
    "If China's search can compete, unfairly or fairly..."
    Well, perhaps the government can force their search engine upon the people but is this really competition? If the Chinese people aren't allowed to choose their search engine, then there's no competition because Google isn't in the market. And who is to know whether the Chinese engine will be any good? I'd have more faith in the development efforts of Microsoft, who have an established track record of hiring the best people to develop their products or buying products to remarket.

    I don't know if I have made my point as clearly as I want. Basically, the government of mainland China will force their engine on the people so it doesn't actually have to be any good. Therefore, Google isn't going to be driven to be any better based on this new foray. Second, Google isn't losing market share because they can't get into the market, AFAIK.

    --
    I hate liberals. If you are a liberal, do not reply.
  5. Police "Hotmail" Hot in Beijing by ramzak2k · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Search for Hotmail on that thing .. :)

    --

    Siggy Say, Siggy Do
  6. how MSN is like China search engines by SourceHammer · · Score: 2, Interesting


    so search for "search engine" on MSN (as other /. posters have done) and you will find that google.com is not in the first page of results.

    What were you saying about censorship again?

    --



    Open source development is my way of competing with the low-cost programmers in India...
  7. Google becoming less wholesome by riptalon · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Google, while technically advanced and lacking in intrusive ads, appears to have slowly drifted away from what most people would consider fair and impartial behaviour as it has grown in size. To take a recent example they have been refusing to index many non-corporate news sites in Google News, while at the same time deciding to start indexing press releases on the websites of major corporations.

    While the crack down on independent news sites may have been unrelated to the invasion of Iraq it has certainly led some to speculate that they are under pressure not to index those who are not cheerleading the war. This is all before you get to the privacy issue and of course the allegations that one of their employees used to work for the NSA.

    PageRank can also be extremely annoying if you are looking for information on an unpopular subject that is similar to a much more popular one. The ability to disable PageRank of even to invert it, to show the results with the least links to them first, would improve things greatly. It may be that the lowest common denominator effects of PageRank are all too welcome for some people.

    Search engines are a critical part of the present web infrastructure and a website is of little value if no one can find it. In the long term it would be of great benefit to all if Google could be replaced by with some sort of distributed search facility with no centralised control, where the individual user would have full control of the process.