China Launches New Search Engine

stupidfoo writes "With all those nasty pro-democracy websites that Google keeps turning up, what's a communist country supposed to do? Well, create their own search engine of course! According to the AP, 'Bill Clinton on Monday helped launch a new Internet search company backed by the Chinese government which says its technology uses artificial intelligence to produce better results than Google Inc.' Accoona Corp. was one of the Chinese companies that donated an 'undisclosed amount' to the recently opened Clinton Library. Using the search engine from inside the US doesn't show any noticeable amount of censorship, but it also doesn't show how it's anywhere near the level of Google."

Comments

Latency

[techsoldaten]

Kathy Feaganes Allen is the lady from Florida who ran down a couple of teenagers for letting their golf ball hit her SUV. Compelling story, something that I really want to know about.

No mention of it on Accoona at all, plenty on Google.

'Nuff said.

M

Re:Latency

[Rei]

Thanks for pointing out this basic fact: Accoona is developed by a *US COMPANY* that simply does a lot of business with China. The header remark:

"Accoona Corp. was one of the Chinese companies that donated an 'undisclosed amount' to the recently opened Clinton Library." ... is completely wrong. Accoona was developed by China Communication Corp of Hoboken, New Jersey. Last I checked, New Jersey isn't in China. Do a whois on accoona.com, also - it's adminstrative contract, its technical contact, everything is in New Jersey.

Blah. I'll bugger off now and let this thread turn to Clinton bashing, as the article submitter was undoubtedly intending.

Re:Latency

[dalutong]

The Chinese suicide rate is indeed high (note: i grew up in China), but the reasons aren't easily guessed.

First, obviosly, China has 4-5 times the population. That makes China's about twice the percent.

Second, China has a very high rural suicide rate. Many of the people who commit suicide are women. While men in America successfully kill themselves more than women do, women attempt it twice as frequently as men. Imagine if America had the same poor heathcare and readily available means of suicide (deadly pesticides are commonly used, as I understand it. those are available in rural China in a way that they are not available here in the U.S.)

I don't know these numbers but I'd like to check out suicide attemp rates in the U.S. I can't really guess which would be higher. As much as I love both countries (and an American who was raised in China might), both have serious problems that could lead to high suicide rates.

Having grown up in China finding such high levels of depression in America was a surprise. After all, we're supposedly leading the lives everyone wants to emulate...

Communist search...

[SkipRosebaugh]

Just for fun, I decided to search on flaws of communism, just before Accoona got slashdotted. Very few, if any, of the search results mentioned "flaws" in the title or summary, and the third or fourth result was actually a communist party homepage. Google, on the other hand, produces relevant documents right off the bat, in America, at least. (Sorry for the imprecision, I closed the window before deciding to post this, and couldn't get in to research.)

Re:Sold China our Missile Technology why not Searc

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

And have since threatened to hit Los Angeles with a nuclear warhead if we ever interfere in regards to our ally Taiwan.

This is not true.

Another comparison: Tibet

[zanderredux]

It's funny to see that a generic query on "tibet" instead of the very specific "free tibet" yields differents results.

Accoona shows a lot of tourist-related information on Tibet and pro-Chinese links on Tibet, that considers Tibet as any another region inside China.

Google, in the other hand, shows a lot of pages related to the movement to free Tibet from Chinese domination. Note the link to the Tibetan Government in Exile's website, which ranked #3 in Google. Also, note that the #3 match in Accoona (under "sponsored links"), shows the Chinese government's page on Tibet.

Isn't this undeniable proof that Accoona's filtering works?

Riiiight.

[gosand]

I am sure others will point this out, but...
Do a search for "linux" on google and on accoona.
Other searches provided just as useless results.

Linux on google:

www.linux.org/
www.linux.com/
www.redhat.com/
www.kernel.org/
www.debian.org/
www.linuxjourna l.com/
www.linux-mandrake.com/
www.linux-laptop. net/
www.linuxtoday.com/
www.gentoo.org/

Linux on accoona:

http://software-linux.jovencitas-cachondas.org/
http://software-for-linux.jovencitas-cachondas.or g /
http://programas-para-linux.jovencitas-cachonda s.o rg/
http://linux-software.jovencitas-cachondas.or g/
http://programas-en-linux.jovencitas-cachondas .org /
http://linux.ittoolbox.com/
http://ie.mojolin. com/
http://zh.mojolin.com/
http://uk.mojolin.co m/
http://au.mojolin.com/

Uhh.

[ad0gg]

China has had multistage ICMBs since the 70's. Nice try troll.

China's ICBMs

Re:I'm disappointed in Clinton.

[lifeblender]

We've got to be friends with them, or we'll be enemies. Clinton knows that the Right in the US would love to demonize China, especially once we run out of middle eastern countries again. So he pre-empts that by publicly cooperating with them. So what if they've violated international human rights agreements? If we hate them for that we'd better stop turning our eyes from our own self-abuse. All large organizations prey on the populace, governments included, the US government included. Clinton is as sharp as he always was. He knows, as you should, that the general policies of a large country are dictated not only by necessity but by ugly politics. If he goes over there and makes nice, just like Bush Sr. did, then we can talk with them about their politics. If it becomes a cold war, then each side will treat the other as faceless, and their political machinery will be out-of-bounds. So let him go over there and talk. Let him say we like China. We do like China; they'd be a good friend, and they treat their citizens about as well as we treat ours. The treatment is different, but the indifference and disrespect is the same.

Better than Google? Not by a long shot.

[Greenspan]

Ever eager to hop on the next technological bandwagon, upon reading the article, I went to this Accoona.com and tried a few searches. The results shocked me. None of the four items I searched for were even on the first page! (except for AOL and Slate, which were found as a sponsored link). Most of the results were not even close to what I was looking for.

Here are the first four Accoona searches I did:

MSN

SLATE

AOL

BAY AREA RIDERS FORUM (this is a very popular bay area-centric motorcycle forum that I regularly visit)

Compare and contrast this with the results I received from Google:

MSN

SLATE

AOL

BAY AREA RIDERS FORUM

Very, very different. After searching with these very common, popular queries, I've come to the conclusion that this new Accoona search engine isn't worth it's weight in salt. Really, it's a great testimony to how good Google really is.

Of lesser importance, the time it takes to obtain said search results is significantly longer than for Google.

Re:A little biased?

[dze]

To be fair, that is a "sponsored result" (in admittedly tiny print). The actual results are lousy though. None of their top 10 are in google's top 10 (which seem quite fair to me -- sites like linux.com, linux.org, kernel.org, redhat.com, debian.org etc).