Google's Problems in China



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Google Meets 'The Great Firewall'

On January 25, 2006, the US based Google Inc. (Google), the world's largest search engine, announced that it was ready to censor the content that it made available in China. Google's Chinese website www.google.cn would be censored by the company itself on the basis of the instructions of the government.

Before this, the government agencies in China used to censor the content on Google's site that violated the regulations (Refer Exhibit I for regulations imposed by the Chinese government on the Internet in China). The topics that were sensitive for the Chinese government included Tiananmen Square, Tibet, the Dalai Lama, Taiwan independence, human rights and the Falun Gong spiritual movement....

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After censorship, users searching for 'Falun Gong spiritual movement', for example, would be directed to sites and articles condemning the movement; sites that supported the movement were omitted from the search (Refer Exhibit II for a few of the forbidden searches in China). Google was of the view that after censoring its content, the company's website would become easily accessible in China. The company announced, "In order to operate from China, we have removed some content from the search results available on Google.cn, in response to local law, regulation or policy."4 Google also announced that users would be informed whenever access was restricted. ........

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