

Tell HN: Consider the implications of Google pulling google.cn - grandalf

When google.cn was available but censored, anyone in the US could simply run the same query on both and make a list of the missing results in google.cn to tell what was being censored.<p>Such a list lent itself to easily gathering the censored documents and distributing them via other secure means to China.<p>Now, thanks to Google, that is impossible.  Did this fact really escape the minds at Google?<p>Google.cn was a great window into what the Chinese government doesn't want the Chinese people to see... now it's gone.
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eklitzke
To be fair, you can easily do the same with any number of other search engines
(e.g. Yahoo). In fact, the original metric that you've proposed isn't very
useful because the same search terms mean different things in different
languages. For instance, in China the Tiananmen Square protests are called the
"June Fourth Incident" (literally: 六四事件) so comparing a search for an English
phrase with the same phrase on google.cn might not be meaningful.

If you really just want to know what topics are being censored, there are a
number of human rights organizations and non-profits that track such things.

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grandalf
You don't have to search google.com in English, you can use the exact same
search phrase in either language, and if you go over the first 100 pages of
results you can get quite a good list even with imprecise search phrases.

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ScottWhigham
This is a strange post to me. Are you saying that Google deciding not to allow
censored results is a bad decision or are you just pointing this out? I'm
trying to figure out what your position on this is.

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grandalf
I do not understand Google's decision.

First, the Chinese people would be better off _with_ google.cn, regardless of
whether or not it's censored. If anything, having quality results for non-
censored topics will help them build economic prosperity, satisfy curiosity,
etc.

Second, the decision makes it difficult to tell exactly what is being
censured. This helps the Chinese government significantly. The most dangerous
form of ignorance is when we don't know what we don't know.

Third, Google had risen above the issue by indicating in google.cn search
results pages that information had been censored. This is a powerful anti-
censorship message with every search. Now it's gone.

It does not take courage to give up and pull out of China, it takes courage to
design a system so essential that the Chinese government relents on its
censorship rules.

In reality, Google is not winning in search in China, so rather than have to
continually answer to investors about why Google can't manage to make a dent
in the search market in China, Google can now claim that it has a noble
humanitarian stance. As I've shown above, the stance is neither noble or
humanitarian.

I can't believe there is nearly a rate of 100% of people in the west falling
for this ploy.

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pinksoda
Scraping Google is against their TOS, so your point is null and void.

