By LORETTA CHAO
BEIJINGâ€"Google Inc. has begun notifying Chinese users when they are using search terms that can trigger China's Internet blocks, in its boldest challenge in two years to Beijing's efforts to restrict online content.
The Internet search giant unveiled on its Chinese search site this week a new mechanism that identifies political and other sensitive terms that are censored by Chinese authorities. For example, when users search for keywords like "carrot"â€"which contains the character for Chinese President Hu Jintao's surnameâ€"a yellow dropdown message says: "We've observed that searching for 'hu' in mainland China may temporarily break your connection to Google. This interruption is outside Google's control."
The Internet giant acknowledged on its official blog Thursday that users in China are having trouble accessing its services, saying failed searches can impair performance on the site. "Users are regularly getting error messages like 'This webpage is not available' or 'The connection was reset,' " the post said.
Google says it hopes the alerts "will help improve the search experience in mainland China," where Google's search and other services have been unstable since it entered a public spat with Chinese authorities over censorship over two years ago. A Google spokesman declined to comment further.
Chinese officials don't discuss their Internet restrictions, and its search terms are treated as state secrets. In its post, Google said the trigger terms were identified based on reviews of the outcomes of the 350,000 most popular search queries in China, not an official list. The post doesn't mention censorship or explicitly say Chinese authorities are the cause of the blocks.
Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Liu Weimin said at a regular press briefing Friday that "there are more than 500 million Internet users in China, and they have access to plenty of information...Like other countries, China also administers its Internet according to law."
China's restrictions include the names of top leaders as well as high-profile dissidents like blind legal activist Chen Guangcheng and references to the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and crackdown.
The move is the most significant Google has made related to China's Internet restrictions since early 2010, when it publicly said it wouldn't adhere to China's censorship policies and said it might have to shut down its Google.cn China site as well as its offices there. Google ultimately kept its China offices but moved its Web search and other services to Hong Kong, where it doesn't have to comply with regulations in mainland China.
But the move has led to occasionally spotty service. As a result, Google has been losing market share in China, according to research firm Analysys International, which estimates the company had a 17% share of search revenue in the country in the first quarter, down from 36% in the fourth quarter of 2009, though company executives have said their revenue is still growing. In comparison, Google's largest Chinese rival, Baidu Inc., had a 79% share in the first quarter.
Still, Google has expanded its operations within the country, adding engineers and sales staff to work on other products, including its Android mobile operating system and services that don't require official censorship, such as e-commerce.
Analysts say Google's latest move could jeopardize some of Google's recent efforts.
"It does seem like a move that would be perceived as antagonistic by Chinese Internet authorities," said Jeremy Goldkorn, director of Danwei.com, which researches Chinese media and Internet.
Currently, companies such as Baidu and the Web portal operated by Sina Corp. offer users a note saying some search results can't be displayed because of local rules and other issues, but they don't specify which terms might have fallen afoul of censors.
On Friday, a number of Chinese Internet users appeared confused by Google's move.
"Has Google also started to 'harmonize' sensitive words?" wrote a user on Sina Weibo, a Chinese Twitter-like microblogging site, going by the name Chester_Hahn, using a term often used in China to mock censorship.
Others joked about it. "Google, you are trying to flip someone's miniskirt up again! You bad boy," wrote one user by the name Xi Gang. Another called Jiu Xian said, "Poor carrot. You are shot even when you have nothing to do with anything sensitive. You are so unlucky to share the same surname, Hu, with our beloved president."
Write to Loretta Chao at loretta.chao@wsj.com
No comments:
Post a Comment