Google bows to Chinese censorship

SAN FRANCISCO – The US online search engine Google has bowed to China’s censorship restrictions to gain access to the country’s booming Internet market.

The company acknowledged that Google.cn, its new site for China that made its debut on Wednesday, would adhere to Beijing’s strict limits on web access. Google joins other major US Internet companies already doing business under censorship rules set out by the Chinese government.It said it would remove links to sites considered offensive by the Chinese government in exchange for allowing the firm to use computer servers located in China.The company also said the new site would not host blogs or e-mail as a way of avoiding legal problems with the authorities, who have employed sophisticated filters to block access to certain websites.”In order to operate from China, we have removed some content from the search results available on Google.cn, in response to local law, regulation or policy,” Google’s senior policy counsel, Andrew McLaughlin, said in a statement.The company said it had engaged in a long internal debate about how to achieve a balance between Chinese legal requirements and its publicly stated mission to offer all possible information to everyone with access to the Internet.In designing its Chinese search engine, Google gathered information on the types of web sites and phrases Beijing finds objectionable, based on information from third parties and by observing how China’s Internet filtering devices operate.Until now, Google has relied on its standard search site to reach Chinese Internet users.But without any servers based on the Chinese mainland and with government filters in place, the site was sluggish and plagued by delays.As a result, the search engine had lost ground to Chinese and international competition and was particularly concerned about Baidu, a Mandarin search engine.Google’s competitor, Yahoo, has come under criticism from human right groups for co-operating with Chinese limits on Internet use.-Nampa-AFPGoogle joins other major US Internet companies already doing business under censorship rules set out by the Chinese government.It said it would remove links to sites considered offensive by the Chinese government in exchange for allowing the firm to use computer servers located in China.The company also said the new site would not host blogs or e-mail as a way of avoiding legal problems with the authorities, who have employed sophisticated filters to block access to certain websites.”In order to operate from China, we have removed some content from the search results available on Google.cn, in response to local law, regulation or policy,” Google’s senior policy counsel, Andrew McLaughlin, said in a statement.The company said it had engaged in a long internal debate about how to achieve a balance between Chinese legal requirements and its publicly stated mission to offer all possible information to everyone with access to the Internet.In designing its Chinese search engine, Google gathered information on the types of web sites and phrases Beijing finds objectionable, based on information from third parties and by observing how China’s Internet filtering devices operate.Until now, Google has relied on its standard search site to reach Chinese Internet users.But without any servers based on the Chinese mainland and with government filters in place, the site was sluggish and plagued by delays.As a result, the search engine had lost ground to Chinese and international competition and was particularly concerned about Baidu, a Mandarin search engine.Google’s competitor, Yahoo, has come under criticism from human right groups for co-operating with Chinese limits on Internet use.-Nampa-AFP