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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."
American companies who are looking to do business in the world's largest consumer market.
America is the world's largest consumer market. China merely has the most people.
Maybe there is something to this.
A search for tiananmen square on Accoona reveals mostly "Travel China" sites, although it does show the National Association for Democracy page as the 11th hit.
A search for tiananmen square on Google finds sites like "student protests", "history declassified" and the wikipedia page.
Hmmm, maybe there is something to this conspiracy theory.
You search for democracy,
and engine finds you.
The Chinese government was one of SEVERAL large investors. Not the only investor as the submittor tried to frame it. This search engine isn't some sort of special anti-democracy device whose sole purpose is to oppress the Chinese people. If you think Clinton was anti-democratic then you must be posting from Cananda right now considering the current administrations policies.
If we are going to start bashing everyone who has anything to do with making or receiving money from the Chinese government then there are going to be a hell of a lot of Neocon's on the list as well.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
This should signal google to immediately remove all of it censorship in China. They tried to do some minimal censorship but if that wasn't enough, why not just drop out entirely and put up a non-offensive message letting the chinese people know what they're missing. If that gets blocked too, so be it. I've talked to a few students from China in the US and they say that the public apathy over censorship is downright frightening. If your content is being censored, put up a message and withhold it all. Nothing they can do about that.
This isn't too surprising. Bill Clinton sold China our multi-stage missile technology for satellite launching. China is using this to build ICBMs to target the western United States.
The claim is perhaps debatable, but after all the accusations about it (I too remember all the hubbub about it years ago), Clinton would have been wise to stear clear of any business dealings related to the Chinese government. It does not "look good". It would be like doing business with Monica's family. Let it be, Bill.
Table-ized A.I.
I'm no communist, but I hate seeing the debate muddied like this. Just to be clear, communism shouldn't be conflated with totalitarianism, just as capitalism shouldn't be conflated with liberty. China demonstrates that well; for most of the past half-century it was basically communist and totalitarian; now it is rapidly moving towards capitalism, but the totalitarianism shows few signs of abating, unfortunately.
You're a suburbanite.
It's funny to see that a generic query on "tibet" instead of the very specific "free tibet" yields differents results.
Not really. If you say the word "Tibet" to somebody, they will think of a geographic region. If you say the phrase "Free Tibet" to somebody, they will think of a specific political issue.
If a search engine delivers different results for the two searches, then it's almost certainly doing the right thing.