Chinese Google

Perhaps you have heard that Google has opened up a new website called google.cn. This google search engine is for specific use in China. They've done this before in other countries, usually as a way to open up a local server to make Google run more efficiently (or something like that, I'm not an internet wizard). Unfortunately, to start this site they had to agree with the Chinese government to censor the search engine. There are plenty of bloggers who have tested this search engine, comparing what comes up with the regular Google and with the Chinese one, and shown that the censorship is obviously political in nature (ironically, you can google those bloggers and see for yourself. I wonder if those bloggers would show up on the Chinese site).

I do not advocate censorship, especially if it's the government trying to silence or hide dissenting opinion. However, it is worth reading this post on Google's own blog, outlining their reasons for allowing this to happen. They make good points, but I'm not entirely convinced that it's for the best. And not to sound all paranoid, but if their main site was having major difficulties in China, is it possible that the government had something to do with that?