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China Says Google Pledged To Obey Censorship Demands
bonhomme_de_neige writes "China renewed Google's internet license after it pledged to obey censorship laws and stop automatically switching mainland users to its unfiltered Hong Kong site, an official said. Google promised to 'obey Chinese law' and avoid linking to material deemed a threat to national security or social stability, said Zhang Feng, director of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology's Telecoms Development Department, at a news conference."
Update: 07/21 21:56 GMT by S : Changed headline to reflect that this is mainly just China trying to paint a better picture of the outcome. In a comment on the linked article, a Google representative said, "This piece suggests that Google has 'bowed' to censorship. That is not correct. We have been very clear about our committment [sic] to not censor our products for users in China. The products we have kept on Google.cn (Music, Translate, Product Search) do not require any censorship by Google. Other products, like web search, we are offering from Google.com.hk, and without censorship." If you go to google.cn, you can see the prominent link to the Hong Kong version of the site.
that Google has milked all the positive PR out of standing up to China (covered by major news networks) and is prepared for the small amount of negative PR by selling out (Slashdot).
The photo of the student confronting tanks isn't a national security risk.
So they won't have to filter that.
In my home it's my rules.
The only source cited in the article is "Zhang Feng, director of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology's Telecoms Development Department." I wouldn't put it past the Chinese government to lie about what Google is doing.
"avoid linking to material deemed a threat to national security or social stability"
AKA, stop linking to any site that has the word 'capitalism', 'freedom', or 'democracy'. Check.
I could have sworn that Google bowed to China's censorship demands once before, and then retracted the censorship policy after wide-spread outcry. Or am I just misremembering things? Because if so, this seems pretty dishonest on Google's part. It's hard to make a statement about the importance of free speech if you keep changing your position on the subject. If I didn't know any better, I'd say the giant mega-corporation was just following the money.
Gamertag: WyleType
at least on the servers in China - if not also in HK
Except in China.
Or where we have to in order ot make (more) money.
Or when it seems like a good idea at the time.
I shouldn't be surprised. It's the natural evolution of a small, innovative company with some moral backbone into just yet another big company. Still, I'm disappointed in you, Google. You were once better than this.
So much for Google's stand against censorship. No matter the 'high level strategic decisions", to me they just look stupid by taking a stand on such "high" grounds and then bowing like a whore for a (big) bunch of dollars
Although China did say that Google is censoring its web search, it's just not true. If you go to google.cn you can see that there is an image which takes you to Google Hong Kong. Even if you RTFA all through the comments you can see the answer from a Google PR person answering to his issue saying that they are NOT censoring web search, and that the only products which remain in China are those that can exist without censorship. This is just the Chinese government trying to make it appear as if they won. That is NOT true. Again, you can't search on google.cn and google.com.hk is not censored
Guess they took a pretty big hit not having a billion people visit your page viewing ads.
Bryan
So in essence all that posturing about defending human rights, freedom of expression and standing against censorship was a marketing ploy to try to mask their acceptance and embracing of totalitarian practices, all in order to worship the all mighty dollar (or euro, yen, or any other currency).
This makes articles such as http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2010/03/22/china-google-withdrawal-shows-government-intransigence">this one, where Google is praised for their support for basic human rights, was in essence a exercise in hypocrisy.
Slashdot, fix your code or at least hire someone who is competent at it to do it for you.
Let's hope China does no evil.
"Cats like plain crisps"
They didn't bow at all. In Google's own words in the article's comment section: This piece suggests that Google has "bowed" to censorship. That is not correct. We have been very clear about our committment to not censor our products for users in China. The products we have kept on Google.cn (Music, Translate, Product Search) do not require any censorship by Google. Other products, like web search, we are offering from Google.com.hk, and without censorship Lucinda Barlow, Head of Public Affairs, Google AU/NZ - July 21, 2010, 2:43PM
Personally, I don't trust one word of what comes from China's propagandists. Does anyone know of any press release from Google about this?
Pardon me while I sigh in disgust.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Who needs catchy slogans when you have shitloads of money?
So much for do no evil.
To be fair, when I search for the (WARNING, graphic images) taboo words on the HK site they take me to from Google.cn, I find the "social stability" threatening images linked to by Google.
If bowing to China is making the user take a single additional click from the google.cn landing page and bringing them right to unfiltered internet searches, that's some pretty lame bowing. I guess if both parties are happy and the Chinese people can very easily get to unfiltered search then I'm happy. Or does Google's Hong Kong search work differently inside China? If it works the same way as I see, I don't know how you could consider that evil. I perceive that Google has succeeded in granting the people of greater China with unfiltered search if they can tolerate an additional mouse click. This is assuming the Great Firewall of China or some government monitoring agency isn't watching these Google.cn -> Google.hk transactions.
How is attempting to bring unfiltered search to the people of China evil?
My work here is dung.
Or so companies think.
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
As The Wired already explained a couple of days ago ( http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/07/google-china-fiction/ ) what Google and Chinese government agreed on is pure fiction. Google doesn't redirect Chinese users to the Honk Kong search engine automatically, but there is a button to easily switch and google.hk is left uncensored in China, meaning that the Chinese can still search Google without filtering. The article linked by Slashdot as the source presents the Chinese official version of the story which obviously hides the above fact.
Polish your GNU/Linux! http://polishlinux.org
well, I know you can't work in fast food all your life
but don't sign that paper tonight, she said,
but it's too late.
And I don't remember what I read,
don't remember what they said,
I guess it doesn't matter,
I guess it doesn't matter anymore.
Google did not censorship anything. The only change they did is: instead of automatically redirecting to .hk domain now the users have to click the big picture on the page to be redirected.
Wasn't there a similar article on /. before?
The change is that instead of forwarding to an unfiltered search automatically users now have to click to get there. Seems like a decent compromise to me...
Do you even know what's happened? Just visit the google.cn page will ya? The whole thing's a bit button that takes you to an uncensored site.
Bowing to censorship my ass! If that's bowing to censorship, then more of us need to do the same!
I'm pretty sure Alaska would let you club a baby seal if nobody objected to it. It's nature! and tourism! all in one!
Are you IN China, getting filtered?
No.
So your results are meaningless.
O-p-p-r-e-s-s-i-v-e G-o-v-e-r-n-m-e-n-t
[Google Search]
"Your search - Oppressive Government - did not match any documents."
"Did you mean Outstanding Government?"
So if google is filtering "material deemed a threat to national security or social stability" from within China. Can we on the outside set it up so we can only browse the material that would be filtered within China. I think it would be educational to browse a volume of material that was "deemed a threat to national security or social stability" of China, it might also be a source of much amusement.
Agreed. ACTA drafts too have been kept secret in the interest of national security by the US government.
The summary is stupid (as in has no basis in reality at all). Has the author even gone to google.cn? It simply present an image of the first page (no search input form), and clicking it immediately redirects to Google Hong Kong, which is not censored. And yet all of you will now decry how evil Google is. It's amazing that they actually beat China and are in fact allowed to do a full uncensored search.
What would interest me is the exact same search phrase on baidu
Baidu
The US does allot to curtail freedom as well. It denies people freedom to print whatever they damm well please. If Google should do anything it is to setup in a country where it isn't regulated and stop filtering altogether.
It's amazing how 90% of the people flaming Google about this haven't tried to actually visit google.cn for themselves to see this first hand. Even the big news outlets don't seem to have tried this.
The whole thing is actually funny, and I'm surprised that the Chinese government is fine with the manual-redirect. I think what Google did is very clever and is a big win for them.
If you post as Anonymous Coward, don't expect a reply.
Google promised to 'obey Chinese law' and avoid linking to material deemed a threat to national security or social stability
So basically Chinese Google will not be connected to the internet.
Bending over is a Chinese thing, or so it would seem as far as it goes with Google.
Seriously. Google has as a company a responsibility to it's shareholder to advantage whatever market there is. Being in China is strictly a business decision. Customers are the ones that decide who they want to do business with. That is your choice and the only thing that influences what perhaps a company considers good business decisions.
The time has come to let go of our juvenile and silly notions of individual freedoms and embrace the blessings of a single stable, hard working party.
I applaud google for showing proper respect to the people of china.
So. Like all corporations, when push comes to shove, they'll bow to the almighty Dollar - or in this case and probably moreso in future, Renminbi. News at 11.
I don't defend Google often, but in this case the story is willfully misleading. Google China is no longer offering web search and links to Google Hong Kong instead. It used to redirect, now the users have to click once. Yes, Google obeys the censorship laws, but it does so by not offering the service from China at all.
Just visit the google.cn page will ya? The whole thing's a bit button that takes you to an uncensored site.
Seriously. It's not even hidden: it says "google.com.hk" in enormous letters right on it. The only other links go to the music, translation, and product links.
But, this is Slashdot, where it is rare to RTFA or, heaven forbid, try to experience the thing.
Aside: it's kind of funny to read the various headlines about this. Some say that China "approved" the Google request; others say China "compromised"; others say the two "make nice" with each other; others call it a "miracle"; still others say Google blew it. A crazy range of opinion there.
Liberal? Conservative? Compare perspectives at Left-Right
How is this bowing to pressure, or even a change (beyond a renewed license) from what the status quo has been for at least a few weeks?
1. Google isn't automatically redirecting users from its Mainland to its (uncensored) Hong Kong page any more, which is keeping the government sweet and fulfilling its legal requirements. It has a static page saying that its search function has moved to google.com.hk and will link you to it if clicked.
2. Google isn''t censoring any search results since they are all returned through the above mentioned page in Hong Kong.
3. Other google services (Gmail, Docs etc) remain, but with varying levels of availability. See: http://www.google.com/prc/report.html
4. Both parties continue posturing; with one trying to win a PR battle in the global media while not losing out entirely on a huge market, and the other focusing on their domestic media/politics seeing no reason to bow to the pressure of a foreign corporation over state laws.
Just kidding. Google did the right thing. I wholeheartedly applaud the googlers for their courage and deftness in turning the google hacking crisis into an opportunity.
Bravo to you sirs! Bravo indeed!
Clap Clap Clap
What we really need is a slashdotter in China that can verify what is happening first hand. What?! no slashdotters in China?!?!!? they must be blocking /. as well :)
tosses away the very American Ideals that made it possible for the opportunity to suck at china's cock.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Come on guys. At least read the whole thing, and not just the title, before publishing. And I mean the comments too.
Why are people so concerned about Google censoring search results in China while being seemingly unconcerned about them censoring search results in the west? We see regular examples of porn sites being removed from the index, searches related to Islam being filtered and other content such as the Michelle Obama image being deemed unstable by our Google overlords. What's more worrying is what you don't hear about and we can only guess at just how far Google's censorship of the web extends.
Google likes to maintain the public image that it's all for free speech while in private it seeks to dictate exactly what web users should and should not see. Before people start whining about censorship in China I think it's important that we sort out the growing issues of censorship in the west.
It sounds to me that China is just blustering and wants the world to preceive that they has squashed Google under their collective thumb even though they haven't. The question is will Google publicly correct them? If not, China will have inched their way towards making "a lie become the truth".
I agree completely. This is a clever albeit transparent trick on the part of Google to let Chinese save face. Make no mistake, China didn't want Google to leave completely, that would've been an international PR disaster (apart from the job loss and other collateral damages). Naturally, Google didn't want to go either, loosing all the business opportunities in China. Most importantly, those services that they don't have to filter anyway, like music, product search, etc. So Google pretended to do something and yield to the Chinese government's demands, and China gladly accepted this opportunity to get out of this impasse (their license to operate in China covers everything, not only search). There's a reason I use pretended - I mean what Google did is very very close to nothing, just check out http://www.google.cn/ - and click anywhere on the screen. This "concession" is a joke, and it was a dangerous gamble on Google's part, since depending on how you look at it, this can be seen as China loosing face (actually bowing to Google's demands) instead the other way around. It also shows the kind of bargaining power Google has. For what exactly did China gain? Well, see for yourself, just goo ahead and visit google.cn and search for something :))
I don't see how this is bowing to Chinese pressure. Once someone clicks one extra link they have access to the same information the rest of us have.
Google has set an example that the rest of the world needs to follow.
Guess a google employee got his mod points today. Truth hurt, sparky?
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Loopholes and such aside, why is this so surprising?
When a company operates here in the US we expect them to obey US law, even on the web, regardless of where they may happen to originate. For an example, look how hard the US works to ban online gambling, even when the companies involved are not physically located in the US, and just operate here via the web. (Whether or not the US is successful at this is a whole 'nother topic, which I won't get in to here.)
Why does everyone expect Google to obey anything other than Chinese law when it operates in China?
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
Just because you goto google.cn and you don't what you believe to be are filtered results, does not mean it isn't filtered.
YOU'RE NOT IN CHINA.
I actually tried this (visiting Google China and clicking through to HK) a week ago when I read about it elsewhere, so when I read this story today I assumed they'd changed their stance again. It turns out it was just the /. one-week breaking news time delay effect (or else this is a dupe and it was here I originally read about it). I wonder how many of the people accusing Google are doing so from the basis of the same misunderstanding (of course, it's still arguable they should have checked the site first, but at least the confusion is a tad more understandable in that case).
How is attempting to bring unfiltered search to the people of China evil?
Because it's Google. And for some around here, Google can do naught but evil. Because they're a corporation, and managed to make some money, or something like that. I really don't understand the sentiment. I didn't think CmdrTaco was in that crowd, but go figure.
They are NOT censoring. *All* the search are still done in the UNCENSORED HK version. All they did was turn a automatic redirect into a full page link, effectively a loophole to comply with the letter of the law but not with the intent of the Chinese government.
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If you had read any of the +5 insightuls above, you'd understand the mod.
It is a PR stunt. It is making Google money. And they are providing normals searches to china. (plus one click)
The way the filtering often works is based on the content of the page. If it finds an unacceptable string, it will give the user a "time-out" from the website for a few minutes. Then the user can go back later and access the site, but trying the same thing will result in another time-out. This isn't so common with Google search results, but it does happen, and even with sites like Wikipedia.
Most Google Images search results will not display any thumbnail. I always assumed that the Chinese government would block the individual Google servers hosting the thumbnail images, but that the servers often change so it would only be partial. Controversial images would probably not be viewable.
However, the relationship between the Chinese people and their government is quite different from what most Slashdotters would expect. Most Chinese people will only say good things about the government, and won't even disagree with the Internet filtering. I've had discussions with people in China about this a number of times. It's definitely not a "government vs. the people" view that we are so accustomed to in the U.S.
Systemd: the PulseAudio of init systems
Guess a google employee got his mod points today. Truth hurt, sparky?
You realize you're responding to yourself, and calling yourself sparky, right?
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It also shows the kind of bargaining power Google has.
I have to agree. China has huge numbers of people and manufacturing might. Google can process and utilize amounts of data that are unfathomable to a typical person. China is a couple decades late to the power struggle. It's all about data now.
Do you have a China proxy that we can use to ensure that's what mainland China people see when they visit google.cn?
Thanks.
it's a dupe. Just this one has a more confusing way to it, for fun.
For what exactly did China gain? Well, see for yourself, just goo ahead and visit google.cn [google.cn] and search for something :))
What they get (or retain) is that the search results are filtered as seen from China, not by Google but by the GWF filters everything through, including google.com.hk or google.com
Though allowing a landing page is saving face by covering the eyes. The landing page would show the differences between HK and mainland more prominently than a silent redirect! The officials asking for or approving that seem just fooling their bosses that they have done something.
http://www.google.com.hk/search?hl=zh-CN&source=hp&q=porn&aq=f&aqi=g10&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=CBd_8519HTLjeOYGwNO_s7YsEAAAAqgQFT9B6Nz0
Yet http://www.google.com.hk/images?hl=zh-CN&safe=strict&q=tiananmen+1989&um=1&ie=UTF-8&source=univ&ei=_WdHTJLKIYqOjAfC-uT0Bg&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&ct=title&resnum=1&ved=0CDAQsAQwAA&gbv=1&ei=AWhHTJ2zEYj-vQOcuOW1Ag
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I guess money is more important to Google than standing up to a nation who has violently violated human rights. US green back is more important than people's freedom, go Google! Don't be evil includes not sleeping with the enemy.
"...a threat to national security or stability..."
Assuming Google filters this out, then there ought to be a list somewhere of "stuff we filtered out". This will make it much easier to find things to threaten and/or destabilize, should someone want to do that.
Just saying... "One Stop Shopping for Anarchists" is probably not what China had in mind here...
-- Terry
I'm reading Slashdot from China at the moment.
That link causes an immediate connection reset from the ISP (Chrome: Error 101 (net::ERR_CONNECTION_RESET): Unknown error.)
This happens every time something forbidden is accessed, and the entire domain will be inaccessible from this IP address for about 10 minutes
Google may not be censoring itself but when the censorship happens at the ISP level there's nothing they can do.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
Uncensored for the rest of the world.
Search (tiananmen) and the connection resets and you're locked out of the google.com.hk domain for a few minutes. I'm sure this happens at the ISP level because the connection reset is immediate.
In fact, I doubt this message will even submit now that I've typed those words in here.
Here's hoping it works.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll