The Great Firewall of China
By Morgan Everhart
In the last year, Google has launched Google.cn, a Chinese version of the popular search engine. In order for Google to tap into one of the world’s largest Internet communities, it had to comply with the Chinese government’s rules and agree to limit search results.
Results are restricted by what has been dubbed “The Great Firewall” and include controversial content and keywords like democracy, human rights, freedom of speech, police brutality, Tiananmen Square, pornography and the blogs of political activists. When a user searches for these banned content they are sent to a filtered search page, with a disclaimer at the bottom stating that the Chinese Government has blocked certain results from their search.
A Google.cn search for Tiananmen Square yields no information about the Chinese Government’s 1989 massacre of several thousand student protestors in Beijing, and instead produces tourist information, facts about Tiananmen Square, photos and a disclaimer at the bottom of the page.
Many are outraged by Google’s willingness to comply with the Chinese government to restrict the information available to their users. Opponents claim this policy directly opposes Google’s stated mission to strive to make information universally available and accessible.
Google reasons that they are helping the Chinese people by giving them access to information that would not otherwise be available to them. Google commented: "While removing search results is inconsistent with Google's mission, providing no information (or a heavily degraded user experience that amounts to no information) is more inconsistent with our mission."
A study conducted by Harvard University in 2002 showed that more than 18,931 of 203,217 individual websites were blocked from Google.cn, making almost 10 percent of websites inaccessible. While Google.cn does not filter most prominent international news sources, like CNN and NBC, the study said it blocks England’s BBC, though it didn’t say why and the Chinese government hasn’t released any information about blocking criteria.
In addition to complying with the Chinese government, Google is also agreeing to censor other unwanted material to comply with laws in other countries, including the United States. Google has agreed to censor its content for several other governments, agreeing to exclude child pornography websites in the United States and Nazi websites in France and Germany. Google’s cooperation with Chinese officials is part of an ongoing attempt for American companies trying to cross the Pacific. Companies like Yahoo and MSN have followed in the footsteps of Google, and all are attempting to walk the fine line that is hoped to lead to global availability and accessibility of information.
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