Jousting with China: Google and Blocked Results
June 15, 2012
Internet Censorship in China is common knowledge with the Great Firewall of China and Google’s just took inventory. According to the article Better Search in Mainland China, Chinese search users were experiencing issues… so Google put a team right on it.
Ladies and Gentlemen, the problem was NOT Google. You’ll be amazed to learn the team of engineers found the issue revolved around key words the Chinese utilized when searching. I know that came as a shock, it did to Google too.
To rectify this issue, Google compiled a list of key words, along with replacement words to use and gave this to their users. You can probably imagine the dismay the Chinese government will feel upon hearing of this. Google is pushing the boundaries of patience with regard to China’s filtering search results.
Google stated:
“In order to avoid connection problems, users can refine their searches without the problem keywords. This won’t cause a timeout, but will still generate search results.”
“We’ve said before that we want as many people in the world as possible to have access to our services. Our hope is that these written notifications will help improve the search experience in mainland China. If you’re outside China and are curious to see what the notifications look like, you can visit this link to try it out.”
Isn’t this a great idea for building more revenue from the world’s largest market? The Chinese built their Firewall to prevent leaks and Google not only publicized forbidden words, but added a few escape routes.
Is this a tactic which will make China love Google even more? We’re not sure.
Jennifer Shockley, June 15, 2012
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