Google, Baidu, and Censorship in China

Just read a really good article about the role Google plays in China in a story from AP headlined "Even a censored Internet has opened up a world for Chinese users." It uses the example of doing a search for the word "Dharamsala,"which is the name of the town in India where the Dalai Lama has his headquarters, and China the Dalai Lama, of course. AP ran the word through both Google's China search engine at www.google.cn and the most popular search engine in the country, Baidu, a domestic search engine, at www.baidu.cn. AP found that Google returned 9.48 million results, while Baidu returned some 119,000 -- a relatively paltry amount compared to Google's. Put another way, for every 1 result from Baidu, there were over 7,966 from Google.


Curious, I repeated the AP experiment. I guess the troops manning the Great Firewall of China read the AP article I'm talking about here. Google China returned only 780,000 results -- way below 10% of what the AP got. And on Baidu, I got only about 13,200, or 11.1% of what AP got. I should point out I ran my search from Thailand. I assume -- but don't know -- AP ran its from the U.S. I also don't know if that makes any difference.


The article is well worth reading -- and I'm about to have my piece here translated into simplified Chinese (the type used in mainland China proper, but not Macau or Hong Kong) so it's more accessible to Chinese in China than would be the case were I to post this in English only.


Fun, fun, fun!!!

只要读一本有关谷歌在中国的角色扮演来自美联社的故事很好的标题：“即使审查的互联网上开辟了中国用户的世界。”它使用了这样一个词“达兰萨拉，”这是在印度城市的名称，达赖喇嘛的总部就设搜索的例子，中国达赖喇嘛，当然。美联社都贯穿着谷歌的中国搜索引擎在www.google.cn字和在该国，百度，国内搜索引擎，最流行的搜索引擎在www.baidu.cn。美联社认为，谷歌返回9480000的结果，而百度产生一些119,000 - 相对微不足道的数额相比，谷歌的。换句话说，从百度的每1个结果，共有超过7966来自谷歌。

出于好奇，我重复美联社实验。我想，部队驻守的中国长城防火墙阅读美联社的这篇文章，我这里所说。谷歌中国只有780000返回结果 - 低于10的AP什么方式得到％。和百度，我只得约13,200名，或11.1％得到什么美联社。我要指出，我跑到我从泰国的搜索。我相信 - 但我不知道 - 美联社从美国跑的，我也不知道是否有什么差别。

这篇文章值得一读 - 我要在这里有我的一块成简体中文（中国大陆的正确，但不是澳门或香港使用的类型转换），因此它更容易在中国中比在本案中我后只在英文本。

有趣，有趣，有趣!!!