Google Tips Off Users in China
Google Inc. GOOG -1.70% has begun warning users in China of certain search words that may trigger the country’s Internet censors, in its boldest challenge in two years to Beijing’s efforts to restrict online content.
Google has begun notifying users in China when they use search terms that can trigger China’s Internet blocks, in its boldest challenge in two years to Beijing’s efforts to restrict online content, Scott Austin reports on digits. Photo: Google.
The Internet company unveiled on its Hong Kong-based search site this week a new mechanism that identifies political and other sensitive terms that may cause service interruptions by Chinese authorities.
For example, when users in China search for keywords like “carrot” in Chinese—which contains the character for Chinese President Hu Jintao’s surname—a yellow dropdown message says: “We’ve observed that searching for ‘hu’ in mainland China may temporarily break your connection to Google. This interruption is outside Google’s control.”
Google acknowledged on its blog Thursday that users in China are having trouble accessing its services, saying failed searches can cause temporary outages on the site. The post is careful not to mention censorship or explicitly say Chinese authorities are the cause.
“Users are regularly getting error messages like ‘This webpage is not available’ or ‘The connection was reset,’” the post said.
Google says it hopes the alerts “will help improve the search experience in mainland China,” where Google’s search and other services have been unstable since it entered a public spat with Chinese authorities over censorship more than two years ago. A Google spokesman declined to comment further.