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Sunday, July 4, 2010

Google V China Continues

In January of this year the world's most populous country came to blows with the world's most popular superpower, online behemoth, Google. The conflict originated over the Chinese Government's attempt to hack into G-mail accounts belonging to human rights workers in the country. The search engine also took issue with China's censorship of certain content online such as the Tienanmen Square massacre.

While the story did make headlines across the world and the search engine operators were lauded for not bowing to the pressure of the rising superpower to heavily censor its results. Since January Google.cn has remained accessible from the Chinese mainland however, beginning March 22nd users of Google in China were redirected to google.com.hk where users could attain entirely uncensored search results.
It seems as though that the war is finally about to end with Google's Internet Content Provider's license coming under review on the 26th of June. The technology giant however submitted its proposals to the authorities late. The result of the review is expected soon.

The search engine proposes making google.cn a landing page with a re-direct to either the Chinese Government approved search engine results or a linking to google.com.hk which will continue, of course, to provide uncensored results.

However, China is not the only place in which Google is forced to limit the content of its search results. In Germany, France and Poland it is forbidden to publish material denying the Holocaust so Google's regional sites don't publish such material in these nations. In Turkey Google is prohibited from publishing material said to mock "Turkishness" . Media censorship is still an issue in our modern free speaking society.

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