Losing Google Would Hit Chinese Science Hard

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."

Comments

Survey says....

[LostCluster]

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?

Google Scholar

[Rary]

My initial reaction to this was "what, they don't have other search engines on the Internet?" I mean, I use Google myself, and I'm quite happy with it, but if it disappeared tomorrow I'd just start using something else.

Then I (gasp!) read TFA, which I know many (most?) of you won't do, so I'll fill you in on the part that the summary missed. The issue here isn't so much that they fear losing Google, but that they fear losing Google Scholar, which, as far as I can tell (although I've never used it), has no free (as in beer) alternatives.

Re:Google Scholar

[routerl]

Google Scholar is the most comprehensive index of scholarly articles in the world, period. Not only are there no free alternatives, there are no alternatives at all. There are services like JSTOR, which only index a limited number of journals from specific services, but nothing that compares to the completeness of Google Scholar (AFAIK). The only real alternative to Scholar is going to individual sites of individual journals and searching for what you're looking for dozens of times in different places. This quickly becomes a day-long project, compared to a 2 minute search.

Re:Google Scholar

[W3bbo]

Microsoft Research has their own Academic Search site, which is pretty useful to me (I hardly ever use Google Scholar). It's more focused on academic research papers and the links between authors than the broader net GScholar casts (there's no Patent search, for example) but it is a free alternative. http://academic.research.microsoft.com/

Re:Google Scholar

[Elendil]

> Google Scholar is the most comprehensive index of scholarly articles in the world, period.

You can't possibly know that, as Google doesn't tell us exactly what's covered by GS.

> Not only are there no free alternatives, there are no alternatives at all.

Wrong. The Web of Knowledge and Scopus (commercial) and Scirus (free) are perfectly valid alternatives. Furthermore, a number of studies in various fields have shown that all of these tools, as well as GS, usually return a number of hits that were not found by the others (again, including GS). Therefore, they can always be seen as complementing each other.

What you cound argue, on another hand, is that GS offers the best quality/price ratio. I for one would accept that.

Being IN China necessary?

[icebike]

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?

Re:Being IN China necessary?

[forkazoo]

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?

By "censored," you mean blocked. Google's ability to operate in China was dependent on censoring all search results to make sure nothing slipped out. Trying to do that kind of content filtering on the national firewall level would be impractical. Where the physical data centers are located is almosta complete non-issue. It's whether or not Google will restrict their content offerings to Chinese central government standards.

Re:Being IN China necessary?

[BitZtream]

Its not 'pulling out of china' in the sense of not having an office there.

Its pulling out of china in the sense of removing all ties with the government, stopping censoring, pulling offices back out of the country, and then waiting for China to blacklist them. Possibly blacklisting china's address space themselves if the chinese government doesn't get around to it fast enough to prove the point.

Nature Conducted the Survey

[eldavojohn]

Link is to an article that does not name who did the "survey." For all we know the whole thing was made up.

I believe the Science journal Nature did the survey. Here's the original article and a breakdown of the survey. Sample size looked to be 784.

Re:"I hope you have the time of your life"- Green

[Tolkien]

They have their own search engines (Baidu), but Google is significant because it would impact *international collaboration*. This would be bad for all involved.

Re:"I hope you have the time of your life"- Green

[ElectricTurtle]

More Chinese users use Baidu than Google. It's not an issue of better or worse, it's an issue of focus. Baidu is sino-centric, which for most Chinese is a positive thing, because most users infrequently need international information. However, Chinese scientists need international information all the time, so for them Google makes more sense.

Re:"I hope you have the time of your life"- Green

[HalifaxRage]

Why it's the AT-5000 Auto-Dialer. My very first patent. Aw, would you listen to the gibberish they've got you saying, it's sad and alarming. You were designed to alert schoolchildren about snow days and such. Well, let's get you home to Frinky. Hope your wheels still work, bw-hey!

Re:What about Baidu?

[ElectricTurtle]

...nations and fields of research are not yet dependent on them...

So you're willfully ignoring the testimony of Chinese scientists? That's like watching something fall and then saying you don't believe in gravity.

Baidu is a sino-centric search engine, which for the average Chinese is a positive thing as they don't frequently need international results, but for scientists who constantly need international and multi-lingual results, Baidu doesn't hold a candle to Google. That's why Baidu has the majority of marketshare in China nationally, but is a minority among Chinese scientists.

Re:"I hope you have the time of your life"- Green

[G33kDragon]

How about we also commission Google to shutdown services wherever we feel science and technology growth threatens our national security?

No more Iranian Google results for "How to build a nuclear bomb"

"Research"?

[CAIMLAS]

Chinese "research", eh?

I wonder how much of that research is "find places to steal information from and use it". Seems we've had a fair number of news articles lately about Chinese espionage, and it doesn't take much imagination to see that a lot of the "new" things from China are actually reverse engineered Western items.

Without effective search, I suspect all the shops in China making Apple product knockoffs would be hard pressed to bring products to market. Likewise for many other industries.

Re:"I hope you have the time of your life"- Green

[Beardo the Bearded]

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.