The Search Engine Weblog

Oct 20 2007

Search Engines Saga In China

There's no denying it; we all have our fave search engines. What makes them irresistibly adorable for us depend on the features they flaunt. So far, among major search engines, Google is the most favorite. But the much-loved search engine, now on its 9th year, is currently experiencing one nightmarish saga in China…

"We've had numerous reports that Google.cn and other search engines have been blocked in China and traffic redirected to other sites," said a Google spokesperson in an e-mail to Information Week. "While this is clearly unfortunate, we've seen this happen before and are confident that service will be restored to our users in the very near future."

Some experts say, the incident might be caused by malware. Other experts have different stand. According to Philipp Lenssen, who maintains Google Blogscoped, the problem actually goes beyond Google. He said sites with the word "search" in their domain name, such as search.live.com, search.yahoo.com, blogsearch.google.cn and even www.search.ibm.com.cn, were all being redirected to chinese search engine Baidu as early as 1 a.m. Beijing time Wednesday.

So, what does China have against Google? Well, it may be nothing directly, it may just be the government's attempt to make a point or practice even greater control. One reason could be this week's Chinese Communist Party Congress, TMCnet reported.

This is one case we have to scrutinize wisely. Google may be etching a very important part on our daily routine. And that could serve as a downside; not just an advantage.