

Ask HN: Whatever happened to Google pulling out of China? - garply

Google.cn is still up and running and it's definitely still censored.<p>Anyone have updates on what's going on with the story? Is Google still planning on carrying through with the following threat?<p>"We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China." (1/12/2010)
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jarsj
I do not think they can run an uncensored google.cn as per the law stands. All
the posting say is that they will spend few weeks trying to find a way to do
that. These things take time. Let's hope Google is trying.

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davidw
Censored how? I was wondering the same the other day, and looked for Tienanmen
square. I did get a few results from the protests.

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blasdel
That's always been true if you spell it like a westerner.

If you think about it at all, it's a very organic result. Chinese people don't
link to stuff about what happened on the square 20 years ago nearly as much as
they link to stuff going on there normally, because they live there and it's
an enormous public plaza.

Americans, on the other hand, don't mention it for any reason other than in
the context of China's embarrassment.

Aren't the censored results always annotated as such anyway?

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jesuschrist
"If you think about it at all, it's a very organic result. Chinese people
don't link to stuff about what happened on the square 20 years ago nearly as
much as they link to stuff going on there normally, because they live there
and it's an enormous public plaza."

Good point! No one ever "links" to things that happened in the past! That
would just be stupid!

"Americans, on the other hand, don't mention it for any reason other than in
the context of China's embarrassment."

Exactly! Americans are a bunch of pricks, yo!

"Aren't the censored results always annotated as such anyway?"

Exactly! Oh, wait, no they're not. Nice try though!

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asolove
The poster makes three claims:

1\. The search was spelled wrong. True, although the Western media often
spells Tiananmen, Tian'anmen is more correct in untoned official pinyin.

2\. People in China would not link to "Tiananmen" in reference to the twenty-
year-old historical incident as often as to the place, which is the site of
many contemporary events. In 1989, the same year, San Francisco experienced a
very strong earthquake that killed and injured thousands. Yet a search for San
Francisco on Google returns only one reference to this in the two two pages.
Is that censorship? Or is it that San Francisco has been in the news since
then and is more commonly linked to for the thousand of events that have
happened since?

3\. The connection between the protest and the "Tian'anmen" name is stronger
in English than in Chinese. True. For example, if you go to the English
Wikipedia page for Tiananmen incident, and click on the Chinese version of the
page, you'll notice it's called 六四事件 "The event of June Fourth." The name
"Tian'anmen" is not associated with the violence and the protest in Chinese,
whereas it is the only reason the word is ever printed in media outside the
country.

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starkfist
Your second point is the wrong comparison. Searching for "San Francisco" is
not equivalent to searching for "Tiananmen 1989." If you search for "San
Francisco 1989" the Loma Prieta earthquake is indeed the dominant result.

