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Losing Google Would Hit Chinese Science Hard

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the talk-to-your-government dept.

An anonymous reader writes to share recent statements by Chinese scientists that indicate troubled waters ahead if Google were to pull out of China. "More than three-quarters of scientists in China use the search engine Google as a primary research tool and say their work would be significantly hampered if they were to lose it, a survey showed on Wednesday. In the survey, 84 percent said losing Google would 'somewhat or significantly' hamper their research and 78 percent said international collaborations would be affected. 'Research without Google would be like life without electricity,' one Chinese scientist said in the survey, which asked more than 700 scientists for their views."

4 of 161 comments (clear)

  1. Survey says.... by LostCluster · · Score: 4, Interesting

    What's going on when somebody in China is allowed to ask 700 people of any kind about any political issue? Isn't that close to that "voting" thing their leaders are afraid of?

  2. Being IN China necessary? by icebike · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Why would Google have to be IN China for the "scientists" to use it as a search engine?

    Just because Google has no offices or data centers in China would not mean it would be unavailable there.

    Censored perhaps, but how difficult would it be for "Scientists" to get around that, or be exempted from it?

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    Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
  3. Re:What about Baidu? by jank1887 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Since these are scientists, I assume that Google Scholar is the thing they'd miss most. Before, you had to subscribe to indexing services (Ovid, Web of Science, etc.) to get access to searchable abstracts, reference spidering, etc. Then, you'd find the article of interest and go to the publisher site to see your options for obtaining the article. Now, I can Google Scholar >95% of the technical literature I'm interested in, I'm shown the multiple versions of a file, some of which might be available for free, I can search a very broad range of topics through a single portal, and it'll take me to the publisher site if that's what's needed.

    Can't beat it. Nobody else has anything close for free.

  4. Re:"I hope you have the time of your life"- Green by Beardo+the+Bearded · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'd rather pay them to change all the results to

    "Did you mean Tiananmen Square?"

    and force all GIS to "Safesearch: Off"

    China then becomes a self-correcting problem.

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    ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.