Google is reportedly planning to re-launch its search engine in China, complete with censored results to meet the demands of the Chinese government. The company originally shut down its Chinese search engine in 2010, citing government attempts to “limit free speech on the web”. But according to a report from The Intercept, the US tech giant now wants to return to the world’s biggest single market for internet users.
According to internal documents provided to The Intercept by a whistleblower, Google has been developing a censored version of its search engine under the codename Dragonfly since the beginning of 2017. The search engine is being built as an Android mobile app, and will reportedly “blacklist sensitive queries” and filter out all websites blocked by China’s web censors (including Wikipedia and BBC News). The censorship will extend to Google’s image search, spell check, and suggested search features.
In the same vein as before, Google cares about freedom of expression and providing access to information. Unless you’re Chinese – then you’re shit out of luck.
There’s a difference between not caring and not being in a position to do anything about it.
China is willing to go to drastic measures to avoid doing business with uncooperative foreign companies. Saying no to the Chinese government means being replaced with someone who will say yes, or else the Chinese government will fund their own replacement.
Edited 2018-08-02 00:06 UTC
In the case of Google (and Twitterbookgram), they already have. So why keep trying to sell their soul (remnants of)?
They absolutely are in a position to do something about it – at this stage a refusal to do business in China sends a strong message.
The problem with Google reinventing the wheel, so to speak, is that it can be applied outside of China as well. Their commitment to freedoms is dubious given their willingness to develop the tech to censor searches. What matters to them is they get their market share and make money doing so.
I was talking about the Chinese government funding the development of alternatives (or at least tacit support by allowing them to continue existence), which they have in effect done with Baidu and Weibo and other things.
Pretty much every service offered by Google was copied in China (and will be ..).
Despite this, they need the market-share one way or the other (Asia is currently viewed as second wave of technology startups that need to go global from investment point of view)
Their services have also been “copied” in other countries where Google is active. For example, OpenStreetMap “copied” Google Maps, KDE Marble “copied” Google Earth, various services have “copied” Google’s former RSS service, etc.
Don’t give Trump and his window licking supporters any ideas.
Their country, their rules.
Why is it that Westerners, particularly those of a certain bent, have such a problem understanding this incredibly simple fact?
Edited 2018-08-02 09:50 UTC
Because… “God bless America” ?
That’s why there should be rule of reciprocity – every citizen of china should be denied everything that is denied to people from another countries in China. In EU no chinese should be allowed to own a company, property or get citizenship.
We should always be critical of authoritarian tendencies regardless of whether they are close to us or far away.
you’ll eventually loose both.
Instead of going to bed with Chinese gov and starting futile attempts to gain market share in a regulated market late in the game Google should focus on lobbying the US administration to discipline other US IT companies who reach dirty compromises and let it prepare countermeasures barring entry of Chinese IT companies on US market.
Hmm, and in the rest of the world google search is not censored?