Google China Uncensors Tiananmen Square Info

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/google-china-censorship-google.cn-chinese,9914.html

by timtadh • 16 years ago

19 13 16 years ago

newhouseb2• 16 years ago

This is not new. Generally speaking, Google only censors Chinese words, and this is how it has been since as long as I can remember (since 2006 at least). See here:

Chinese TianAnMen Search http://images.google.cn/images?hl=zh-CN&source=hp&q=...

English TianAnMen Search http://images.google.com/images?sourceid=chrome&q=tianan...

Still looks censored to me...

est4• 16 years ago

It's really perceptual fallacy

1. We don't even call TianAnMen event or massacre in China, more common expression is Student Movement or the 1989 Student Riot, or June 4th event

2. TianAnMen is a symbol to westerners, but to Chinese it has other more important meanings.

Using TianAnMen as a testing keyword is simply wrong

newhouseb2• 16 years ago

Would Falun Gong be a better keyword? (Warning these can get quite graphic)

http://images.google.cn/images?um=1&hl=zh-CN&tbs=isc...

http://images.google.com/images?um=1&hl=en&tbs=isch:...

est4• 16 years ago

False

http://203.208.37.99/images?hl=zh-CN&source=hp&q=tia...

Google's global CDN is too complicated for average reporters to write about. There are enormous parameters to tweak if you want to mimic the real google.cn search behavior in China.

Also WHY EVERY WESTERNER USE TIANANMEN AS A TESTING KEYWORD?

tiananmen maybe famous in the west, but in Chinese it has other definitive meanings. Who the f__k would link a square with a massacre?

My theory is Google does not censor Tiananmen. e.g. the Chinese blog http://liblog.blog.163.com/blog/static/53679382200981773143/ It's not because Google censors it, but because there are just very few Chinese blogs or pics named TianAnMen.

Tiananmen is just insignificant. During culture revolution people shooting each other with guns even mortar on streets, machine guns were pretty common to guard important facilities. My college even had a f__king cannon installed on the main building.

If you really want to test censorship in China, use a real keyword, like this one

http://www.baidu.com/s?wd=%C4%C9%C3%D7%B1%C8%D1%C7+%BA%FA%BD...

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=%E7%BA%B3%E7%B1%B...

smokinn• 16 years ago

English translation please? I have no idea what that keyword might be.

chengas123• 16 years ago

http://translate.google.com/#zh-CN|en|%E7%BA%B3%E7%B1%B3%E6%...

est4• 16 years ago

It's about our China president's son got involved in a bribe scandal in Namibia. It's a Lv. 1 keyword

garply2• 16 years ago

I live in China and I don't think it's wrong to use Tian'anmen (at least the Chinese term) as a keyword:

http://www.google.cn/search?hl=zh-CN&source=hp&q=天安门...

(Tian'anmen Square incident 1989)

That looks quite censored to me (ymmv if you access this from outside the PRC).

Like the man standing in front of the tank? I'm sure my girlfriend (who is a native Beijinger) would like to blog about that, but she wouldn't dare. She occasionally tells me about how one of her grade school classmates got hit by a stray bullet and died at Tian'anmen. She lived near the Square and heard the gunfire as a child and her sister's got a drawing she made of the freedom statue that was put up there. I could see all of those things going into blog posts, except they don't put them there because of fear of retribution. So I think there is censorship around the term, and I think it's a valid search query.

est4• 16 years ago

> I'm sure my girlfriend (who is a native Beijinger) would like to blog about that, but she wouldn't dare.

You see, what I mean is that Google does not really censor this Tiananmen keyword too hard, but it's really there's not many Chinese content about 'tiananmen'. Because people would not write about that particular keyword.

The real heavily censored keyword about Tiananmen is this

http://203.208.37.99/search?q=%E5%85%AD%E5%9B%9B%E4%BA%8B%E4...

> That looks quite censored to me

Try this one http://203.208.37.99/search?q=89%E5%AD%A6%E6%BD%AE

Like I said, the domestic Chinese see things from a different angle, because westerners don't see it does not mean it didn't happen or Chinese didn't know.

eru• 16 years ago

Your first link is blocked by my employer. Strange.

hetman• 16 years ago

Indeed, this search term has been uncensored when searching google.cn from outside of China for some time. I'm surprised it took Tom's Hardware so long to get onto it.

fnid2• 16 years ago

If a war breaks out between google and china, who do you think will win? My money is on China.

Google China Uncensors Tiananmen Square Info

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