Microsoft's Bing Refuses Search Term "Sex" In India

An anonymous reader writes "Apparently Microsoft is censoring search results for Bing in India and other countries. If you try to search for the term 'sex,' along with lots of variations, from India using Microsoft's new search engine, an error message is returned that says, 'the search sex may return sexually explicit content. To get results, change your search terms.' There's no preference setting or toggle-on-or-off choice; you simply cannot search for the term 'sex' in India if you are using Bing. While a user still can change their country and try the non-Indian version of Bing, this seems like an unnecessary step and unnecessary censorship on the part of Microsoft. Apparently Google has no problem with Indians searching for the term 'sex.'"

Comments

Microsoft obviously has to listen to Countries.

[Mwise1023]

Heya,<br>

It's not like M$ just does as they please. The internet is not as <i>free</i> as people seem to think it is. A country can limit and control as much of those pipes as they want. Obviously not everyone gets on board with that. But M$ clearly doesn't want to step on toes and is playing ball with someone. Why else would they limit their search engine in a country like India where sex is far from taboo. But, whatever powers that be with money that M$ is trying to be in bed with have more say with M$ than something like Google. If they were going to limit things from the pipes, then everyone would be limited. But as it is, M$'s search engine is essentially a big `proxy' and it can draw things from other networks to them so naturally it's earier to just have the proxy prevent certain things, or in this case, M$. Google simply would rather get more searches to reveal more ads to make more money. So they don't block stuff. And that's how it should be frankly.<br>

Very best,