The Associated Press (www.ap.org) announced on September 27 that Google Inc.'s recently launched news service in China doesn't display results from websites blocked by that country's authorities. According to the Associated Press, Dynamic Internet Technology, Inc. (www.dit-inc.us), a research firm striving to defeat online censorship, conducted tests that found Google omits results from the government-banned sites if search requests are made through computers connecting to the Internet in China. Steered by an identical search request, computers with a United States connection retrieved results from the sites blocked by China.
Bill Xia, Dynamic's chief executive, said that that's a problem because the Chinese people need to know there are alternative opinions from the Chinese government and there are many things being covered up by the government, and that users expect Google to return anything on the Internet because that's what a search engine does. Xia suspects Google is co-operating with the Chinese government's censorship efforts to smooth the way for expansion plans that could help the Mountain View-based company boost future profits. The Chinese government lashed out at Google two years ago when it temporarily blocked access to the company's main search engine before relenting under public pressure.
Google acknowledges that its Chinese language news service, introduced on a test basis two weeks ago, is leaving out results from government-banned sites, but the company believes the omissions jibe with its long-standing mission to make its search engine efficient and useful. If Google were to display results from sites the Chinese government blocks, computer users would end up clicking on links that lead nowhere, something the search engine has always tried to avoid.
