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Microsoft denies censoring Chinese-language Bing searches in U.S.

While it is well known that the government of China censors access to the Internet inside its borders, a recent report claims that Microsoft is doing the same for Chinese-language Bing searches made in the U.S. The report is now being denied by Microsoft, and said that those reports were based on technical errors in the Bing system.

Anti-censorship site Greatfire claims that it searched for topics that were considered to be politically sensitive in China via Bing in the U.S. but using the Chinese language. It stated that the search results were highly different than if those same topics were searched in English. For example, searching for the Dalai Lama in Chinese leads to highly censored information about the sprirtual leader of Tibet offered by the Chinese government.

In a statement sent to Endgaget, Bing's Senior Director Stefan Weitz denied the company applies the strict Internet censorship laws found in China outside that country. He added, "Due to an error in our system, we triggered an incorrect results removal notification for some searches noted in the report but the results themselves are and were unaltered outside of China." He did not indicate if the error had been fixed. 

Source: Greatfire and Engadget | China flag image via Shutterstock

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