After a week long song and dance surrounding
the Google.cn launch, it would now appear that the Chinese government itself
has been blocking access to the website for domestic Chinese users.
'Traceroutes', a procedure that maps out the 'route' taken to access a website,
showed problems similar to those of other banned sites - e.g. BBC.co.uk. At
this time, according to a traceroute located in China, Google.cn does appear to have been unblocked.
Google had hoped that its attempts at self-censorship would be enough to allow
it to operate in the Chinese market. It currently holds around 26% of the market share, and is the under-dog to domestic giant Baidu.com.Users in
China
now receive 'sanitized' results on some search queries; examples include those for
the massacre in
Tiananmen Square. However, in
a similar fashion to requests in the
USA
or
Germany,
Google informs users that results have been removed.
Google received heavy criticism with Google.cn's launch. Many suggested it
contravened the company's 'do no evil' motto. Google, in an explanation
befitting the company's (albeit brief) history, appeared to weight up the pros
and cons, and decided that more information was better than none.
Ironically, it was noted that the poor
access to Google.com was a prime reason for the launch of the Chinese specific
site. Google had believed that removing results would be enough to satisfy the Chinese government; clearly, the company has more than just mere ethical dilemmas to solve.
News source: Forbes
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