Google.CN: A Preliminary Test

by Dajuin

The biggest news today is of course the launch of the custom-made, localized version of Google for Mainland China: Google.CN. (VOA, LA Times, NY Times.)

A search for 脱汉 (De-Han, or De-Sinification) resulted in 3,880 finds on Google.CN, and 3,980 finds on Google.com. (BTW, our own discussions on this topic - which happens to be highly critical of the movement - on the ForeTaste Cafe forum is ranked number 4 on Google.com and number 7 on Google.CN.) The Chinese local version’s first obvious omission is a link to www.tibetalk.com. No big deal here. It seems that the authorities have yet to sense the power of this oddball coinage.

A search for /ffaaa//*/lllunn/@//ggo@nnng//*/ (I’m adding random letters and symbols here for obvious reasons) using Chinese characters resulted in 864,000 finds on Google.CN and 2,820,000 finds on Google.com. What is interesting and amazing is that ALL of these 864,000 finds on Google.CN are linked to official propaganda articles denouncing the movement.

Now, I have neither the time nor interest in doing further test searches, as we all pretty much get the picture. One thing I cannot figure out, though, is: did they have a super intelligent and elaborate software algorithm to decide on the contents of these 2.8 million articles - whether a text is “for” or “against” the theme, or, did they hire an army to do the filtering by brute force?

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2 Comments »

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  1. Frank Dai has a not-so-comprehensive-(yet) round-up on Global Voices Online (aha! now you see where did GNO’s name come from!):

    He has also uploaded a screenshot of the search result of the keyword “1989“, in which there is a line that reads: “Some results are not being displayed in compliance with local laws and policies.” Of course, the line is displayed on every page featuring censored results.
    News from Sina Tech (via DoNews, in Chinese)

    In the Chinese blogosphere, Google.cn is being called “The castrated version of Google” or “Eunuch version of Google“.
    Many English-language blogs on China scoff at Google’s slogan “Don’t be evil“, example 1, 2.

    The Guardian’s leader “Googling round Chinese walls“:

    If these are not enough, go and see search results of “Google.cn” on Technorati:

    Comment by lawrence — January 26, 2006 #

  2. Comments from Imagethief:

    http://news.imagethief.com/blogs/china/archive/2006/01/25/5702.aspx

    (Don’t miss the links at the bottom)

    Comment by lawrence — January 26, 2006 #

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