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Bing Censoring All Simplified Chinese Language Queries
boggis writes "Nicholas Kristof, a New York Times journalist, is calling for a boycott of Microsoft's Bing. They have censored search requests at the request of the Chinese Government (like certain others). The difference is that Bing has censored all searches done anywhere in simplified Chinese characters (the characters used in mainland China). This means that a Chinese speaker searching for Tiananmen anywhere in the world now gets the impression that it is just a lovely place to visit."
well if their goal was to differentiate from google, i guess "don't be evil" is a good place to stand apart.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
The reporter at the "New York Times" completely misses the big picture. If Bing is censoring only simplified Chinese queries, then anyone in mainland China can do a search in any other language and obtain the full uncensored results.
In other words, Microsoft has cleverly created a big hole (in its agreement with Beijing) that allows uncensored information to flood into China. The only catch is that the query must be in some language (e. g., English) that is not simplied Chinese.
By contrast, Google censors everything in China, regardless of the language used for the query.
Besides, Microsoft's scheme will encourage ordinary Chinese to learn a foreign language: English., Japanese, etc. Doing so is always positive as many Western languages means many channels by which foreign ideas can enter China, thus modernizing it.
More likely google tried to do the wrong thing because they had to and succeeded. Microsoft tried to do the wrong thing because they had to and messed it up.
We have seen the results of Microsoft's work and Google's work. Google is an innovative technology company, Microsoft are a bunch of clowns with an innovative and sometimes illegal marketing strategy.
Gasp!
Once we're boycotting all the search engines that have caved into to the demands of the Chinese government, what search engines are left?
Am I part of the core demographic for Swedish Fish?
I have been self censoring my bing english language querys.
134340: I am not a number. I am a free planet!
Don't you get it? Anyone who wants to visit Tiananmen Square is being sent to the Ministry of Public Security for...reeducation.
As assholes, Americans should be very careful of all the people out there that are dicks.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
"Just Enough Evil"?