Search Engine Optimization News Blog

The Chinese government seems come down heavily on Google again. On Wednesday this week, Google’s websites were not available in major portions of China. Google’s email Gmail too was not available temporarily. However now the service has been restored. According to China’s internet watchdog, Google’s search engine promotes pornographic content in China and the Chinese government cannot allow this. The state owned television network CCTV also reported the same on June 18.

Though there is an agreement already between the Chinese government and Google on censoring of internet content, what can be viewed by the visitors and what cannot be viewed or accessed by them, the problem seems to crop up again. If you try to access censored content we will see the message, “According to the local laws and policy, part of the search results are not shown.” Still today, we can see this message while using Google in China. We can’t make searches on names like Hu Jintao and Wen Jiaobao, these are names of some of the Chinese leaders. If you look at the situation in China, it is not just Google that is serving search results on pornographic content but there are many Chinese search engines that freely serve results on pornographic content. We are not sure of the sanctions on those Chinese search engines. This has made many eyes turn towards Baidu with suspicion, as this is number 1 search engine in China. It may not like to be rivaled by Google so many internet users feel that Baidu may have a hand in this latest episode against Google.

From July 1 all the computers that connected to the internet should have Green Dam Youth Escort which is a software that will filter pornographic content and political sites. However, the question is whether such an enforcement of law in China is against the trade rules. We can see resistance against this move even within China. People also fear that the usage of Green Dam software can subject the internet users in China to high level of risk as this is not a sound software.

Though there are many restrictions people in China always have a way to go about it and escape government firewalls. While having so many problems within, coming down on Google alone makes things look little fishy.

Google is working with the Chinese officials to handle the situation in an amicable way. Google cannot risk the Chinese market because it is one of the largest markets and still has a great potential for growth. Google will take every step possible to be in the good books of the Chinese government. The company has invested a considerable amount of money for its Chinese sites so backing now from the Chinese market would mean severe loss for Google.