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Google has introduced a new feature for Chinese users that will pull back the curtain on Chinese Internet government censorship.

This week the search engine giant Google kept a polite smile on its face as it stuck its shiv in up to the hilt, introducing a feature to its Chinese site that tells users exactly when the censors have blocked a search word for being too sensitive.

Beijing Bureau Chief

Peter Ford is The Christian Science Monitors Beijing Bureau Chief. He covers news and features throughout China and also makes reporting trips to Japan and the Korean peninsula.

The Chinese government keeps its list of banned search terms secret; Google is now revealing them. But not once did Google Vice President Alan Eustace mention the word censorship in his blog introducing the new feature.

Instead he noted that users in China are regularly getting error messages when they search for a particular subset of queries. He mentioned the word jiang as a case in point but did not explain why such a common surname that also means river should be a banned search term.

Its because jiang is the surname of former president Jiang Zemin, about whom the censors dont want Chinese citizens to find out much because most of what is written about him on the web concerns his allegedly poor health and his role in succession struggles within the ruling Communist party.

The problem for Google users in China, and Google, is that whenever a user searched for a banned word not only would the search yield only an error message, but the connection to Google would be lost for a minute or so, which is highly inconvenient.

No wonder that Google has only 16 percent of the Chinese search engine market, way behind local competitor Baidu, with 78 percent. Baidu self-censors, so its users have no problem searching jiang. Google has refused to self censor since 2010, when it withdrew from the mainland and based itself in Hong Kong.

Googles new feature, designed, says Mr. Eustace, to help improve the search experience in mainland China, will warn users when they are searching for a banned word that will cut their connection, allowing them to re-define their searchwords.

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Sly Google wields the knife in Chinese Internet censorship tussle

AFP Friday, Jun 01, 2012

YANGON - The tormentor-in-chief of Myanmar's heavily censored media will put down his black marker pen for good in a month, signalling the end of one of the world's most draconian press scrutiny regimes.

Tint Swe, head of the Press Scrutinisation and Registration Department (PSRD), said he will release its iron grip on the country's media in the latest significant reform for a country emerging from decades of repression.

"There will be no press scrutiny job from the end of June. There will be no monitoring of local journals and magazines," he told AFP in an interview in his office in Yangon.

"I would say it is the right time rather than we are ready. When we have parliament and government working on democratic process, how can censorship work at the same time?," he said.

Stifling pre-publication censorship - applied in the past to everything from newspapers to fairy tales and the winning lottery numbers - was one of the key symbols of junta-ruled Myanmar, where even seemingly innocuous details were scrubbed from public discussion.

Sweeping reforms under a new quasi-civilian government have seen a lighter touch from the once ubiquitous censors, with less controversial publications freed from scrutiny last year.

Editors across the news media are now eager to have the same freedom. A more open climate has seen private weekly news publications publish an increasingly bold range of stories, including those about opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, whose very name was taboo in the past.

Tint Swe directed the PSRD for seven years, mercilessly changing headlines, slashing paragraphs or scrapping entire articles deemed critical of the military and its cronies.

"He had one of the worst jobs in Myanmar," said an editor at a news weekly who requested anonymity. "He was pressured from above by ministers, officials and powerful business people to keep stories out and pressured from below by editors to keep stories in."

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Media censorship in Myanmar to ease: Official

In its latest effort to squash efforts by Beijing to restrict online content, Google (GOOG) began warning people in mainland China on Thursday that certain keywords in searches may trigger the governments Internet blocks and break their connection.

Google, which has long fought against Internet censorship in China, launched this week a new feature on its search engine there that informs users which keywords are likely to trigger censorship blocks and cause a system outage for more than a minute.

- Google

The tech titan said it started reviewing the system after complaints by users on mainland China of spotty service. After taking a long, hard look at its system, it found no internal problems, but noticed specific keywords, such as the character Jiang, which is a popular surname that also means river, can cause connection problems.

The new mechanism includes a drop-down menu that appears under the search bar when problematic keywords are typed. The warning informs users that going through with the search may temporarily break your connection to Google, and ensures that that the interruption is outside Googles control.

Users can choose to either search anyway or edit search terms.

By prompting people to revise their queries, we hope to reduce these disruptions and improve our user experience from mainland China, Google said in its official blog on Thursday. Of course, if users want to press ahead with their original queries they can carry on.

Google appointed a team of engineers in the U.S. to review the 350,000 most popular search queries in China. They looked at multiple signals to identify disruptive queries, and then identified specific terms at the root of the issue.

Weve observed that many of the terms triggering error messages are simple everyday Chinese characters, which can have different meanings in different contexts, Google said.

For example, Jiang, the surname and word for river, not only causes problems on its own in a search, but will break connectivity if also searched with Lijian, the name of a city in the Yunnan Province, or the Jinjiang Star hotel chain.

Originally posted here:
Google Wages Keyword Battle Over China's Censorship

BEIJING (AP) -- Google has fired a new salvo in a censorship battle with Beijing by adding a feature that suggests alternatives for search terms that might result in blocked results.

Google's announcement Thursday did not mention of Beijing's extensive Internet controls. But it comes after filters were tightened so severely in recent weeks that searches fail for some restaurants, universities or tourist information. Authorities were aiming to stamp out talk about an embarrassing scandal over the fall of a rising Communist Party star.

Google Inc. closed its China-based search engine in 2010 to avoid cooperating with government censorship. Mainland users can see its Chinese-language site in Hong Kong but the connection breaks if they search for sensitive terms.

The new feature will alert users in China if they type in a search term that "may temporarily break your connection to Google" and suggest alternative terms, Google said in a blog post signed by a senior vice president, Alan Eustace.

"By prompting people to revise their queries, we hope to reduce these disruptions and improve our user experience from mainland China," Eustace wrote.

Google cited as an example the Chinese character "jiang," or river, without mentioning that it also is the name of former President Jiang Zemin, the possible reason the government blocks search results. It says the site will recommend users in China write their search terms without that character.

A Google spokesman in Tokyo, Taj Meadows, declined to comment on reasons for the feature or whether the company was concerned about Chinese government retaliation.

Google was allowed to keep a network of advertising sales offices in China that might be vulnerable if the communist government tries to punish the company.

Google, based in Mountain View, California, had 16.6 percent of China's search market in the first quarter based on use of its global and Hong Kong sites, according to Analysys International, a Beijing research firm. It was in second place behind local rival Baidu Inc., which 78.5 percent, but ahead of other Chinese competitors.

Google is also promoting its Android mobile phone operating system for use by Chinese manufacturers. Chinese regulators approved Google's $12.5 acquisition of Motorola Mobility, a wireless device maker, last month on condition Android remains available to Chinese companies and others at no cost for five years.

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Google adds feature to help China searchers

In a move designed to sidestep government censorship of search results, Google has added a new feature to Search in China: An alert that will tell users if their search terms are likely to trigger watchdog action.

In a move that will surely cause trouble for the Internet search giant, Google is changing its search service for users in China to add a warning that will alert users if theyre using terms that could result in some form of governmental censorship.

In a blog post today, the company announced that it will notify users in mainland China when they enter a keyword that may cause connection issues, adding that [b]y prompting people to revise their queries, we hope to reduce these disruptions and improve our user experience from mainland China. The problem with the user experience, according to the company, was that many Google Search results would be replaced with error messages reporting that This webpage is not available, or The connection was reset. Weve taken a long, hard look at our systems and have not found any problems, the blog post continues, However, after digging into user reports, weve noticed that these interruptions are closely correlated with searches for a particular subset of queries.

The blog post doesnt mention censorship at all, instead calmly referring to the companys wish to have as many people in the world as possible have access to our services. However, the company has had tumultuous relations with the Chinese government for some time, even getting to the point of accusing the government last year of attempting to hack the personal Gmail accounts of hundreds of users including, among others, senior US Government officials, Chinese political activists, officials in several Asian countries (predominantly South Korea), military personnel and journalists.

Itll remain to be seen whether or not China will respond to the changes. Technically, Google isnt actually stopping the Chinese government from censoring results, its merely warning users when they might be about to trip the censorship; the blog post announcing the change even offers that if users want to press ahead with their original queries they can carry on. And yet by drawing attention to the issue in this way, and suggesting that their team of engineers has cracked the code of what, exactly, is likely to cause the censored search in the first place it feels as if this is almost daring China to respond in some way. I wonder how much trouble it would be to permanently offer 404 errors for all of Google Search

(Via)

Excerpt from:
Google changes Chinese search to alert for censorship