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Google Highlights Censored Search Terms In China

Posted by Soulskill on from the websearch-sunlight-project dept.

itwbennett writes "Responding to complaints from Chinese Googlers that the search engine is 'inconsistent and unreliable,' Google has updated its service to help users steer clear of search queries that will result in page errors. Google will now highlight characters and phrases that are likely to 'break' a user's connection. 'By prompting people to revise their queries, we hope to reduce these disruptions and improve our user experience from mainland China,' the company said in a blog post."

4 of 99 comments (clear)

  1. Reminds me of stills during prohibition by shoppa · · Score: 5, Interesting

    During prohibition in the US, stills could be owned and sold, just not used to produce alcoholic beverages. There were still legitimate purposes for stills, e.g. malt extract for baking.

    The manufactures helped out, by giving very explicit instructions on exactly what NOT TO DO, because if you followed all the steps, you'd end up with whiskey. And you wouldn't want to do that.

  2. Just China? by girlintraining · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'd like to see this feature rolled out in every country. There are very few countries that aren't busy censoring something; Whether it's the copywrongers or some anti-terror legislation, or the latest "Save the children" law, Google receives piles of censorship demands weekly from every government. We can't just say "Shame on China!" when everyone else is doing variations on the same theme.

    --
    #fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
    1. Re:Just China? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

      In Germany you often get a little notice at the bottom of the results if something has been filtered because of our censorship laws (mostly fro-teh-children bullshit). It would be nice if it was more obvious and more specific though. At least they link to chillingeffects.org, where you can compare local search results to "global" search results.

  3. Google bans the english terms also by Cito · · Score: 1, Interesting

    link to test out yourself: https://www.google.com.hk/?esrch=SearchNotices::OptIn&q=%E9%95%BF%E6%B1%9F&hl=en

    Screenshot of Google banning the term Freedom of Speech: http://image.dude-suit.net/albums/userpics/10002/googlecensor.png

    and it's google blocking it, since I'm in the states unlike their blog where they make it sound like it's china blocking before the search gets to them, which is untrue.