Google China Censoring or NOT?
Are our fellow bloggers taking up some of the Main Stream Media’s habits of reporting only the juiciest information even when it might be far from the truth? I took a little closer look at the JunkYardBlog story on Google’s censoring of the Google.cn web search engine. While the JunkYadBlog did a great job of showing how images.google.cn is filtered, they did not bother to tell what the main Google.cn search engine returns when plugging in things like the word “Christian”. It seems that the main Google.cn search engine actually returns more hits than the US version of Google when searching on the word Christian. Why make such a big deal over the images site and skip the fact that the main search engine seems to not reflect such an anti-Christian sentiment?
I got 251 Million hits on Google.cn when searching for Christian
I got 201 Million hits on Google.com when searching for Christian
Why not report this? Is this a case of a blog gone MSM? Why not share these facts Mr. Preston?
I also wondered what would happen if you took some of the terms that are likely being censored and translated them to Chinese and then run the search again on Google.cn. I did come up with very different results. I got less than 64 million results when I searched for “Jesus” on Google.com. You can click on the images below to see the actual current search engine results.
I then searched for “Jesus” in English on Google.cn. I got just over 93 million results.
Then I translated “Jesus” into Chinese using the Google Language Translate page. Next I searched Google.cn for the translated version of Jesus. I got 1.7 million results.
This example of the differences in the Chinese version of the Google Search engine and the regular Google.com site does not confirm censorship at all. I am really surprised that Michele Malkin didn’t catch this, but rather played right along by stating, “Searching for Christ in China – Google won’t be of much help”.
Here is another one reported on the JunkYardBlog that only mentioned the images.goolge.cn results.
JunkYardBlog reported:
On a clean search, Google-China turned up 10 hits on an image search for jesus christ. Just like that, no quotes. By comparison, the US version of Google image search turns up 168,000 hits on the same exact search terms. 168,000 versus 10. And this is just an image search.
Why didn’t the JunkYardBlog go ahead and report on a search using the main search engines of Google.cn verses Google.com for the term “Jesus Christ”? Because it would not have been as sensational of a story, that’s why. Here is how it would have read if they had included the main search engines of Google instead of only using the images search. On a clean search, Google-China turned up 32 million hits on a search for Jesus Christ. Just like that, no quotes. By comparison, the US version of Google search turns up 29.6 million hits on the same exact search terms. 32 million versus 29.6 million.
The JunkYardBlog says:
This is a very serious issue. Google has put its financial bottom line over basic human rights. An American company is assisting the Chinese government in a Stalinistic airbrushing of faith from the internet. That Google is helping Beijing wipe Jesus Christ off the web…
I say this is a very serious issue too. Is this a case of a blog trying to draw in readers using a partial truths? Is this the whole truth or only enough of the truth that will capture the attention of the likes of Michelle Malkin to get a little link love?
Update: Google China Censorship and Google Business Decision
January 29th, 2006 at 3:56 am
I dug into this too. I think I’ve figured out why different people are getting vastly different results. Check my blog for an explanation if you’re interested. I’d be interested in your take.
January 31st, 2006 at 10:43 am
[...] [...]
January 31st, 2006 at 11:52 am
The question here is not if Google is filtering result sets based on domain suffix but are they doing it based on IP?
Logic would state that they are doing the filtering by IP as this would be easily restrictive based on region. If by domain suffix how could they give China the “feel good” feeling they are looking for? All a user would have to do is pu tin http://www.google.com to get their results instead right? If you base it by IP then the targeted region would not be able to connect to the “outlawed” data.
Just my 2 cents.
February 3rd, 2006 at 7:44 am
Friday’s Blogospheric Conditions
Cake Blogging – Remember my post about Warren Brown? He’s a D.C. entrepreneur who just opened his third story and landed a show on the Food Network called Sugar Rush. Too cool.
Warren’s joined the blogosphere. Visit the Official CakeLo…
February 3rd, 2006 at 1:34 pm
[...] The story I did last Sunday on Google’s censoring of its Chinese search engine site has been linked in La Shawn Barber’s post titled Friday’s Blogospheric Conditions. My story on this subject called attention to the JunkYard Blog for falling into a MSM style slant by reporting partial truths. The JunkYard Blog seemed to just bypass the fact that the main Google search engine in China produces more results on religious terms like “Jesus Christ” and “Christian” than does the main Google.com search engine. The JunkYard Blog focused on the images.google.cn site which does show a bias against Christian related searches. [...]
February 5th, 2006 at 1:01 am
[...] Most of the bloggers and media doing the criticizing probably have no clue how the average Chinese user searches or which Google site they use to search. Do folks in China use Chinese characters on Google.com or do they use English characters on Google.cn. There are a lot of assumptions packed into most of the analysis of the Google China story. I do not claim to have any better information than anyone else, but at least I am passing judgment on Google based on partial truths. [...]
February 10th, 2006 at 3:22 pm
[...] You and Michelle can read HERE, HERE, and HERE for more on this story. [...]