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

Trying searching for banned terms

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting to look for "Tiananmen Square", it doesn't seem to be completely banned. Or maybe the filter only comes into effect if you're behind the Great Firewall of China?

Cataloguing latency?

[eln]

How much of the difference in quality results has to do with the fact that Google has a huge head start in indexing the web? Maybe Acoona's results will improve over time?

Re:Latency

[SIGALRM]

The deal gives Accoona data on some 5 million Chinese companies, which Accoona sees as a lucrative opportunity as U.S. businesses seek to do business in China

Although I seriously doubt the folks at Google are shuddering over this new "rival", you can't overlook the potential benefit to American companies who are looking to do business in the world's largest consumer market.

doesn't seem so bad

[JeanBaptiste]

free tibet still gets plenty of hits....

even falun gong gets plenty of hits back.

Once I get off work im gonna have to anonymous proxy inside china and try it.

Re:doesn't seem so bad

[darkani]

try "taiwan independence" or "taiwanese independence"

Re:Latency

[techsoldaten]

No doubt.

Then again, my company is not looking to do business with China. What real use does a tiny search engine have for me right now? (Not to mention the Chinese state probably censors the thing.)

For the present, I will stick with the tried and least-untrustworthy solution.

M

Re:Latency

[Anonymous Coward]

Not in 5-10 years, which is the approximate horizon for buisness visiblity.

Sold China our Missile Technology why not Search ?

[Art Pollard]

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. (And have since threatened to hit Los Angeles with a nuclear warhead if we ever interfere in regards to our ally Taiwan.) This was after he received numerous under the table donations for his campaign from the Chinese government and financiers. After he sold out our national security to the Chinese for some campaign donations, giving the Chinese a national search engine is no big deal.

Re:Latency

[Steve Embalmer]

America is the world's largest consumer market

Only in terms of actual dollars spent per capita. China has *BY FAR* the fastest growing consumer growth in spending in the world. You can't ignore 1.3 billion people who have increased discretionary spending who wanna buy stuff.

A little biased?

[CroyDax]

First search result for 'linux' is microsoft.com

http://accoona.com/search?col=mc&qt=linux

Re:Communist search...

[mboos]

I got something similar for 'Flaws of communism,' with the following suggestion:

Spelling suggestion: laws of communism

Re:Latency

[Rei]

Good point - the parent was comparing apples and oranges, since their search was about current news, which is an additional feature that accoona never claimed to support at the present time. Lets compare real searches on controversial topics.

Search for: uranium enrichment

Google top hits: A lay-person article from the US nuclear regulatory commission; A more detailed, although still not technical article from the australian Uranium Information Centre; 6 old news articles about controversy about Iran's nuclear intentions; a completely nondescriptive page of a company that deals in uranium enrichment equipment; and an article nearly identical to the second one, from the World Nuclear Association.

Accoona top hits: A whole bunch of spammy sponsored links, right at the top of the page instead of on a side bar (booo!). The WISE project (World Information Service on Energy)'s links (some quite technical) about the entire uranium production and enrichment cycle, although from an environmentalist standpoint. The American Nuclear Society front page (useless, without further search on the site). 2 bloggers writing about Iran's nuclear program. A PDF (no convert to HTML option) of an investor factsheet about an enrichment company (no technical details at all). A blogger, whose site shows nothing relevant that I can see (and there is no cache option). Another front page to an inapplicable site (Riodejanero.com - apparently at some time in the past it had an article about getting approval for an enrichment plant). 2 old news articles about Iran's program controversy. The homepage of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service (no good information visible in apparent links; apparently the group is related to WISE).

Summary:
While google returned a lot of results tangential to actual uranium enrichment (for example, about the fact that one particular country, Iran, has been enriching uranium; if a person wanted those results, they realistically would have added Iran to their search), it performed far better than Accoona. Accoona returned a lot of "front pages" to websites instead of links to actual articles; many links to sources that no longer had the relevant article linked; and links to many poor quality sources (such as blogs). All in all, Google clearly wins top marks.