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Google Suggest Disabled In China Due To Porn
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "The Chinese government has asked Google to disable Google Suggest because it has been suggesting that people search for pornography based on its analysis of the most popular search terms in China. This comes on the heels of a fake CCTV interview being used to support the government requirement that all new computers ship with the 'Green Dam' Internet censoring program, which is still in force, despite reports to the contrary." The story on the chinaSMACK site demonstrates that Chinese search engine Baidu features a comparable search-suggestion function, which similarly recommends adult-themed sites, but that the government has not attacked Baidu over the issue of porn.
It isn't a big news and it is not new for sure.
China is just doing this to give its own search engines a competitive edge. It does this with the film industry by only allowing 10 foreign films to be shown in China per year.
And sadly it's nothing special. When typing a URL that doesn't resolve on a mainland China ISP a Baidu-sponsored search page (full of ads, no simple search box) appears. It was only in 2006 when google.com itself was redirected to baidu.com by some ISPs some of the time. Some of the country (in major cities, forget the countryside) has the facade of development, but with basic corruption endemic at the bottom and top levels, it has a whole lot further to go.
The software is required to be delivered with by manufacturers on harddisc or one CD. It was never intended to be required to run as a user [wikipedia.org]. The scope of the software is mainly parental control. This hole thing in the media about censorshipware sounds like yet another propaganda campagne by the West.