Google's Chinese search engine was defying local law on Tuesday by returning links involving the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and the Xinjiang independence movement, according to a report from NBC News. Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but the company tells NBC that despite its January 12 …

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Wednesday 17th March 2010 13:27 GMT Anonymous Coward

All bulls**t

This is Google making a withdrawl.

If they pull out they will have to answer shareholders and advertisers.

If they are kicked out, they claim the moral high ground and don't have to compensate anyone.

Of course if kicked out they will make as much noise as possible after all, no such thing as bad publicity.

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Wednesday 17th March 2010 13:32 GMT Ken Hagan

Alternatively

Depending on quite how Google actually determine what they are going to filter, it is perfectly possible that some third party has made some changes that cause the prohibited images to circumvent the existing filters. That would be convenient for the local authorities in China, who were waving a big stick yesterday and now have someone to bash it with.

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Wednesday 17th March 2010 14:00 GMT Anonymous Coward

Who was braver?

The tank STOPPED from running over the protester in Tienanmen square, so in hindsight, knowing how monstrous some countries are these days, this image is not so contentious:

http://images.google.com/images?hl=nl&q=rachel corrie

I'm not sure who was the braver, the person standing in front on the tank or the tank driver refusing to run them over, knowing that a court martial in China can be a death sentence. Was the tank driver punished for refusing to drive over him?

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1. Wednesday 17th March 2010 20:52 GMT Don Quioxte
  
  check to see if the tank was buried
  
  Check to see if the tank was buried.
  
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2. Thursday 18th March 2010 08:38 GMT Pascal Monett
  
  Nice substitution argument
  
  You sir, are a troll.
  
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Wednesday 17th March 2010 23:14 GMT I didn't do IT.

Iz Haxx0rz

... and now we know what was taken from Google from the hack, eh?

Who knows what other meddlings could occur from knowing the Truthful Secret Sauce?

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Wednesday 17th March 2010 23:14 GMT Anonymous Coward

Baidu not filtering?

I'm confused by this assertion of censoring.

Are you saying that Google has self-censored it's search results in the past, but the Chinese Baidu search site is NOT censoring those same results...? Or this whole thing a big lie?

< http://www.baidu.com/s?bs=tiananmen+square&f=8&wd=tiananmen+square+1989 >

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Thursday 18th March 2010 10:26 GMT Anonymous Coward

Captain obvious

Even if google.cn is closed down, there will still be http://www.google.com.tw/, http://www.google.com.sg/, http://www.google.com/webhp?hl=zh-CN ...

Yawn. The more you think about it, the more it is about nothing.

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Thursday 18th March 2010 12:17 GMT mittfh

Censoring

IIRC, Google was told to censor the search results for certain queries to comply with Chinese law. However, whereas most ISPs and search engines apparently just return a HTTP error, Google apparently showed a page saying something to the effect of "Sorry, but I can't allow you to do that" - so people knew they'd been filtered, rather than the page being down.

I wonder what people's reaction would have been if, instead of filtering the content, Google had put up an intermediate page saying something to the effect of "We have been requested to filter this content. You may click on the link below to access it, but you do so at your own risk." In that case, Google would still be informing its users about 'naughty' content, but simultaneously still allowing access to it...

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