China Denies Google Access
Tuesday, March 30th, 2010 
Source: Los Angeles Times
Google’s main search engine appears to have been blocked in China on all search engines across the country.
Searches for seemingly innocuous terms such as “Beijing” and “China” returned error messages. Twitter users across the country reported outages of the search engine starting at around 5 p.m.
It’s unclear whether the blockage was ordered by the Chinese government, which has been angered by Google’s decision to shutter its China-based site March 22 and reroute users to its uncensored site in Hong Kong.
Google officials did not respond to requests for comment.
The company’s other services, such as e-mail and maps, were still working by late Tuesday evening in Beijing. Internet users conducting searches using the “advanced search” option or with Google embedded in their Web browser also did not encounter problems.
Ordinarily, sensitive terms such as “Tiananmen massacre” or “Tibetan independence” are blocked by China’s content filters, better known as the Great Firewall.
But the firewall can be unpredictable. Words that don’t appear to be overtly subversive often get caught in the dragnet. Recently, “carrot” was a banned term because, in Chinese, it sounds similar to President Hu Jintao.
What’s in a name?
NY IT consulting services work closely with issues involving Internet searches, helping businesses and individuals alike use Google as a marketing tool and search engine both. Tracking everything from how to find a NY computer service, compare car insurance rates, or find a Tallahassee FL plastic surgeon are often done using Google. In China, it may not matter whether you can use the Internet to shop for a decent car insurance quote, but the gesture of censoring what is searchable and what is not in that country is widespread.
On Tuesday, the error messages were returned uniformly for any search. Curiously, each rejected search contained the letters “rfa” toward the end of its Web address or URL. The letters are known to be a censored term in China because they abbreviate the banned Radio Free Asia.
It’s unclear whether the letters were put there by Google or not, but Chinese Internet users speculated Tuesday that the addition was triggering the error messages.
Google officials acknowledge that their services could be blocked at any time. The company’s public stand against censorship has elicited strong rebukes from Beijing since the company threatened to close its search engine in China two months ago.
On Sunday, the American Internet giant also reported that some of its mobile features were partially blocked.
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My Take: I wonder what would happen if I lived in China and was doing a search for something as innocent as the HCG Drops diet plan? If you don’t know, HCG drops are a harmless and effective weight loss supplement that are perfectly legal here in the U.S. But I imagine I’d be in a heap of trouble on that one, considering the crackdown the Chinese government has installed over Google searches.
It just doesn’t seem right that we should still be hearing about civil rights abuses in China in 2010. While we sit down at our laptops and PCs every day and freely scour Google or other online search engines for everything from screen printed Greek shirts to where to get the cheapest Destin FL face lift, the Chinese government is busy worrying about its citizens finding out too much about “stuff” they are eventually going to find out about anyway.
I think particularly of college students who want to learn about history of other countries besides their own. Without significant resources, an open and free flow of information, they are limited to stories about what Greek clothes looked like in the 7th century. If you ask me, the more you take away access to information, the harder and faster those who lost it will work to get it some other way. And information is a healthy weapon to rely upon when you are a hungry learner.
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