Comments on: How I didn’t get a Google shirt

By: tasuki

tasuki — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 09:24:45 +0000

Drcu, nemam nic proti cestine, ale kdyz uz se tu rozbehla diskuse v anglictine, tak bys mohl pokracovat

It’s B, they allow you to search for whatever you want, but will not return the relevant results. Still, they still show the note that the results are censored because of chinese government.

Ignus, first, I like how you subtly correct my English without being too obvious about it – thanks

Google is a company, they want profit… and there is plenty of money in China, so they can’t really afford not to operate there.

As for the 99%, it was obviously not the exact number, but I personally think that it’s a huge understatement – you have no idea how many pages are about Britney Spears, porn, flash games, useless blogs (ahem), etc. Most of the internet is total crap, and I believe they only censor a very small (though maybe the most important) part.

By: ignus

ignus — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 20:27:27 +0000

Good to hear that question has been asked.

After reflection it seems indeed that the course taken by Google is the only imaginable one in this world… Sure, I’d like the corporation not to venture into China at all, and any other as well, but I’d also like … many other things ;p

99% seems exaggerated to me, and Google could have had more transparency in their pr about this… but that is nutpicking… Anyway I still recommend this pdf I gave a link to.. ;p

By: Drc

Drc — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 15:03:05 +0000

Ahoj,
nemáte někdo představu jak funguje cenzura výsledků vyhledávání? Napadají mě dvě možnosti:
a) zákaz hledání určitých výrazů (např.: nedovolí ti hledat slovo “tibet”)
b) nezobrazování odkazů pro které jsou zakázané výrazy relevantní (např.: dovolí ti hledat slovo “kuchyně”, ale nezobrazí ti stránky kde se mluví o “tibetské kuchyni”)

V případě, že se jedná o a) tak to nen tak hrozné (technicky, ne morálně) - musíš akorát chytře hledat.

BTW zkuste najít na netu tibetské místní názvy a mapy - je to docela zábava.

By: tasuki

tasuki — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 08:58:09 +0000

Yes, Google censors in China, as we all know. This question got asked, and Douglas said that if they didn’t, they would get banned from China. Douglas said they still serve 99% results, and that they have a note at the bottom of the search page that they can’t serve all the relevant results because it was forbidden by the Chinese government.

How would you have preferred to solve the situation?

By: ignuś

ignuś — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 07:29:25 +0000

update: sorry, it’s actually yahoo that helped the police to imprison bloggers.

google only censors.

By: ignuś

ignuś — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 07:24:34 +0000

since google is in many ways ethically dubious — giving out the data of chinese bloggers to the authorities, for example, which led to the imprisonment (for 10 years) of somebody who wrote his own thoughts on a blog — I would personally never wear a google t-shirt.

dunno if I will be targeted as spam when I post a link, but here goes

and yes, I do use google.

unfortunately.