Chinese Sites Band Together To Counter Google 305
egoff writes "The China Search Alliance is a coalition of over 200 Chinese internet portals that have joined together to try to capture the Chinese search market before Google can "invade." Started by China.com.cn, an official government portal, the CSA has now expanded to include mainly commercial, non-governmental, Chinese sites. According to Guangzhou-based New Express News, Google has already approached several Chinese firms about forming a partnership. Being that it started in the government, this looks like a tool for greater control while appearing to be in open competition with Google."
What good would a search engine do in China? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What good would a search engine do in China? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:What good would a search engine do in China? (Score:2, Interesting)
Censorship and Search Engines (Score:3, Insightful)
It all depends on your major in college (Score:3, Insightful)
US engineering and business schools don't exclusively cater towards engineering and business disciplines. There are other disciplines as well. All you are really discovering is that foreign students tend to study science, engineering and business; not liberal arts and humanities. If you wish to b
that's not all there is to it (Score:2)
In this, though, they are not so different from ethnic Europeans (in N. America or Europe) until the mid-20th century.
I think the combination of the massive cultural inertia of the Chinese, relative isolation until recently, and centuries of grinding poverty where the demands of taking car
Re:that's not all there is to it (Score:2)
I am quite shocked to be identified as part of the political correctness police. Much like the original poster you jump to conclusions with very little evidence. I am not part of the politically correct crowd. If my sentiment in this matter seems to agree with them it is simply a coincidence.
My problem with the original poster is not his support for human rights. It is merel
MOD PARENT DOWN! (Score:2, Insightful)
What the fuck is wrong with the mods! Damn! How can someone say "Chinese have no ethics" and be called "informative" and not "flamebait"?!
Yes, there are some differences between the core of the cultures and values of China, US, Ind
Re:MOD PARENT DOWN! (Score:2)
"Oh, that never happens in this ethical capitalisitic society!"
I'm not going to argue that that never happens in the United States, but I will argue that the United States does attempt to do something about it, even if nothing more than lip service. Even ignoring actions by the federal government (sanctions, etc.) consider the damage that was done to companies like Nike when it came to light that they w
Re:MOD PARENT DOWN! (Score:2)
I have responded to the original poster, but just want to point out here that there is and was no "definitive desire" to reunite with the Mainland by the people who actually live here. Do you seriously imagine that a rich First-world city wants to be subject to a corrupt Third World dictatorship? Deng Xiao P
Re:Hong Kongers Wanted to be Part of China (Score:2, Informative)
I don't usually reply to ACs, but, this is still bullshit. Hong Kong people (I live there, I have an ID card, I'm married to a Chinese, so I KNOW WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT) did not ever want to be part of China. As for demonstrations, over 1 million demonstrated against China in 1989 after Tiananmen Square, and still do every 4th June since.
Re:Hong Kongers Wanted to be Part of China (Score:2)
If Hong Kong wanted to remain British, if Hong Kong had said anything, the PRC could have weighed in on the matter with the full backing of the UN. Take a look at all the flak the US and the UK are getting from the rest of the UN (almost to a man) about the continued posession of places like Puerto Rico, Guam, Gibraltar, the Faulklands, Deigo Garcia... Even though the people of these places have repeate
Re:MOD PARENT DOWN! (Score:2)
Having your cake: criticizing the Chinese government for totalitarian rule which stomps on civil rights.
Eating it too: criticizing the Chinese people for not defying totalitarian rule which has few compunctions about disappearing those
Re:Chinese Search Engine: Nefarious Purpose (Score:2, Insightful)
but that does not mean America or Britain or the Western world is any better culturally, China had the whole communist thing going on and they've only recently under the leadership of Deng Xiao Ping start to come out of their shell.
give them time, it took a few hundred years for brits and americans to realise how wrong slavery was, how w
Re:Chinese Search Engine: Nefarious Purpose (Score:2)
Maybe you missed this part: "China Search Alliance launched its first fee-based search service, the Search Ranking service, in China. If customers buy a keyword or search catalog, their names will be ranked higher on the list of search results." That sounds more like good old capitalism to me.
the Chinese on Taiwan use their constitution to declare that Tibet is part of mainland China while the
Re:Chinese Search Engine: Nefarious Purpose (Score:2)
"I feel really sad to see this kind of comment posted by Americans and supported by American moderators. It certainly damage the diversity of our society,"
I don't like people disagreeing with me. It damages our diversity.
Mod parent up! (Score:2)
So it's ok for the RIAA and other corporations to control the internet but not the government?
It's insane. the wacko says "we have debated the issue of the government controlling the internet", yet we haven't debated the issue of MS, the RIAA, and the MPAA controlling the internet. Yeah, there have been debates about how they should do it (mostly in closed government meetings), but no public debates as to why they should be allowed to control the entire next generation communication system! Eventually, th
Re:Chinese Search Engine: Nefarious Purpose (Score:2)
Maybe the author was just trying to indicate that Chinese ethics are plain stupid. If humans were really mean
Re:Chinese Search Engine: Nefarious Purpose (Score:2)
Little-known fact: Individualism as a sociological concept didn't exist until Hobbes and Rousseau (independently) began writing about it at the beginning of the industrial revolution. That's because before the IR, human beings were more or les
Re:Chinese Search Engine: Nefarious Purpose (Score:2)
I find it somewhat hard to believe that, before the indistrial revolution, humans cared so little for each other that they would freely allow an injured person to die. In fact, I don't believe it at all. Apes and other creatures have a natural instinct to care for their own, and humans most certainly do.
Which isn't to say we're not "supposed" to be individuals; I'm s
's OK with me (Score:5, Funny)
Chinese Google? (Score:2)
Re:'s OK with me (Score:2)
It's hard to pin down where most spam comes from, but the sheer volume of it coming from China is certainly there for everyone to see.
There's also the piss-me-off-more factor. I'd rather see something like "Hey, I'm 17 and I have a webcam" or "SIZE DOES MATTER!!!" than "We sellin
Re:'s OK with me (Score:2)
Re:Hypocrit Americans (Score:3, Funny)
we have no right (Score:4, Insightful)
We also have the right never to use their search engines.
Aren't rights wonderful? Eventually they'll become more capitalistic. By allowing them to create their own technologies to do so we allow them to create superior products theoretically...and if they have a superior search engine eventually, they'll want to sell it to americans. Capitalism keeps the world going round and round..that or Newton's law of universal gravitation...not sure which
you have no rights. (Score:5, Insightful)
If you believe that, you have no rights. If you believe that there are no limits to government, obviously anything the government wants to do is OK with you. It's no more true than any two people have the right to kill a third. You have natural rights, one of which is to say and read what you will. It takes positive government action to interfere with that right. Because all governments are supported by the efforts of their people, those that violate natural rights are considered abusive wasters of resources. Abusive governments only exist when you let them and you would let them.
what to do (Score:2)
Governments don't uphold rights, they can only respect or violate them. It is up to the people to uphold their rights.
Actually, you can and should tell them how to live. This is how we all learn. Bombing, in support of a popular uprising, is not a bad idea but useless
Re:what to do (Score:2)
I agree with that statement 100%. The rights granted to the federal government by the US Constitution are just words on paper, as is the federal government itself.
Oh, I'm sorry, were you under the wrong impression that the constitution had anything to do with "granting" personal rights?
"During McCarthyism, for example, this paper was walked over on. And people thought it was quite right as long as they were not
Re:you have no rights. (Score:2)
No, your government upholds the rights you believe should be upheld, which is as it should be.
Let me show you what comes immediately after the "unalienable rights" bit that you paraphrased:
Re:you have no rights. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:you have no rights. (Score:2)
But I hope we all can agree, that America (the continent) or Europe are the best places to live. Not Africa. Not Asia. Not China.
Re:you have no rights. (Score:2)
Re:you have no rights. (Score:2)
For those historically impaired, "The White Man's Burden" is a poem by Rudyard Kipling published in 1899. Its a euphemism justifying imperialism. Nowadays, this isn't patriotism - its jingoism.
Re:you have no rights. (Score:2)
I really think you need to work on your imagination.
Re:you have no rights. (Score:2)
The government chooses to grant rights to the people because if it doesn't, the people will choose to grant themselves a new government.
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants."
-- Thomas Jefferson
TTFN
So what if it is their country? (Score:2)
Re:So what if it is their country? (Score:2)
Re:we have no right (Score:2)
It is their country. They can do what they want really.
Well now that's the sticky part now, isn't it? Who is "they"? In this case, "they" is the government, and not necessarily the people who live with the decision "they" make. If there was a vote and 80% (or something) of the population voted in favor of blacklisting Google, then fine. Go for it. But the real issue here is that it is the government deciding that its people should not be allowed to access a given resource, namely Google. And that is what
Re:we have no right (Score:2)
You Are Confused...and Wrong (Score:2)
China -- the sovereign country -- has an established record of blocking and manipulating internet access, including search engines like Google. The government of China does this because it is an illegitimate t
Re:You Are Confused...and Wrong (Score:2)
Sure, people fought for the Communists (and others) to free China. But all they got was Mao and his political descendants. The country China was freed of foreign control, but the Chinese people remained, and remain, unfree. It's a perennial trick of wannabe dictators: Play on the legitimate hatred of the colonial power to foster revolution, but ensure that the foreign tyranny is replaced with internal tyranny. Free the country in order to enslave the p
Re:You are Right, but the Chinese are Different (Score:2)
Re:actually, You Are Confused...and Wrong (Score:2)
If you are the subject of a government, rather than a citizen of a democracy, what differenc
Re:we have no right (Score:2)
If by "they" you mean "China's communist party," then you're right. If you instead meant "the people of China," you are wrong on many levels.
"We also have the right never to use their search engines"
But they do not have the right to use alternatives.
"Aren't rights wonderful?"
Only when you have them. "National sovereignty" is a legal fiction that is based on (and should take a back seat to) personal sovereignty. A government has no rights except those granted to it by the p
Re:we have no right (Score:2)
It's easy to make a bad argument when you throw out important distinctions.
This is a Good Thing(TM) - click for explaination (Score:5, Insightful)
Now that Google has a serious competitor (due to the enormous population of China), it will try to improve to compete fairly. So will the China search system.
As much as I like Google, it has a monopoly on non-suckiness of search engines. If China's search can compete, unfairly or fairly, it won't be a mere arms race - only good can come of this.
This is a good thing for everyone.
Re:This is a Good Thing(TM) - click for explainati (Score:2, Interesting)
But will they compete, or will they block Google from the country once their search engine is large enough?
Re:This is a Good Thing(TM) - click for explainati (Score:2)
Re:This is a Good Thing(TM) - click for explainati (Score:2)
Interesting... (Score:2, Interesting)
Well, perhaps the government can force their search engine upon the people but is this really competition? If the Chinese people aren't allowed to choose their search engine, then there's no competition because Google isn't in the market. And who is to know whether the Chinese engine will be any good? I'd have more faith in the development efforts of Microsoft, who have an established track record of hiring the best people to develop their products or
Re:Interesting... (Score:2)
Re:Interesting... (Score:2)
I don't think they will have much of an impact because their people are going to be cut off and t
Re:This is a Good Thing(TM) - click for explainati (Score:2)
Besides: you have to show Google can improve before you can say something will cause it to improve. There is such a thing as a perfect tool.
Re:This is a Good Thing(TM) - click for explainati (Score:2)
The thing here is that Google has it's "monopoly" because it doesn't suck. Because they *aren't* evil, and they *aren't* exploiting their position to fuck us all over. For all intents and purposes, they got to be what they are by giving us exactly what we wanted.
You should thank them, not call them evil for their own popularity.
Sure.... (Score:5, Funny)
Well... (Score:5, Insightful)
Gov't Interference (Score:2, Insightful)
interference (Score:5, Insightful)
competition (Score:4, Insightful)
But there is no substitute for now - Google rocks! I especially love Google Labs [google.com].
Over-reactive (Score:3, Interesting)
But a bunch of portal sites organized with the Chinese Government?
What benefit do they have? What are they afraid of? I could understand if they wanted to have a Chinese-only search-bot. But even still, there's little point in that. That limits your resources drastically.
Re:Over-reactive (Score:3, Informative)
Bear in mind that the chinese goverment - beeing a tad more leftwing than most others - have a history of trying to 'guide' what their people see, read and think. We're talking about the same goverment that demands that internet-cafes log every site their customers look at. We're talking about the same goverment that has - in the past - blocked off entire subnets where they have found sites that are critical of the aforementioned chinese goverment. We are - when we get down to it - talking of the same gover
Re:Over-reactive (Score:4, Insightful)
I wouldn't describe them as "leftwing"; a better word would be "totalitarian", but since Mao's death it's really just been "authoritarian" with strong socialist underpinnings. It hasn't been a true communist state for some time (though it's nowhere near to being a proper capitalist state).
From what I've read and been told (college history class, etc.), the attitude of the Chinese government can be oversimplified as one of extreme distrust over any mass medium or mass *movement* that they don't control. Tiannamen is the most famous case, but the Falun Gong and indeed any sort of religion are persecuted because they represent popular organization that isn't managed by the government. When Zhou Enlai (China's most famous Communist leader other than Mao - very interesting person) died, many people were genuinely distraught and held a spontaneous wake in Beijing. The government broke it up, because it wasn't under their control. I think the Internet appears the same way to them.
That's just my opinion, but a Chinese coworker thought it made sense when I explained it to him.
How the internet triumphed over Communism (Score:2, Insightful)
However, nobody knew that the Communist government of China, just as nimble as it was repressive, would be able to exploit its immense pool of cheap labor to remain a powerful force through the dawn of the 21st century.
But now we are seeing that power crumble. As Altavista, Lycos, and Yahoo realized in the late 1990s, it is impossible to become the best search engine port
Re:How the internet triumphed over Communism (Score:2)
The crumbling search engines you referred to crumbled because they have to make a profit. Read that again : the commercial sites MUST MAKE A PROFIT or they die - and the Internet is littered with such remains.
Portal/Search sites run by the Chinese (government) don't need to make a profit. They don't need to create a competitive PRODUCT, they can run without banner ads, without sponsorship, and without anyone paying for page rank. As long as they get their money from the g
Re:How the internet triumphed over Communism (Score:2)
provide a better service to the public than
commercial sites such as Google because they don't
have the commercial baggage and clutter and
demands from shareholders.
Google doesn't have any shareholders.
Google is a privately owned company.
Google is the master of its own fate (as much as
any company can be in this modern age).
Just thought you'd like to know.
Re:How the internet triumphed over Communism (Score:2)
Re:How the internet triumphed over Communism (Score:3, Informative)
Uhh, no. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the eastern bloc communist states had much more to do with Gorbachev and the untenable nature of a command economy than Ronald Reagan. As romantic as it is to believe his "tear down this wall" speech was a determining factor, it really wasn't. If you're looking for heroes in this arena, try Lech Walesa first.
Re:How the internet triumphed over Communism (Score:2)
To be fair, it seems probable that Reagan hastened the fall, but I've never believed that the outcome was planned that way or that America's fiscal irresponsibility during those years was appropriate. One thing I read recently pointed out that Reagan's most lasting contribution was emphasizing human rights in the Soviet bloc, which apparently really did encourage the many dissidents over there like Vaclav Havel. (Ironic given Reagan's abominable track record on h
Re:How the internet triumphed over Communism (Score:2)
Really? I know his reputation in the West has been grossly inflated, but I wasn't aware of anything bad that he'd done - care to elaborate?
In any case, Soviet Russia was falling for its last 20 years. And it had surprisingly little to do with the lack of a free market.
Agreed, sort of. The symptoms that plagued Russian industry can be seen in many individual companies in the US. However, in the US the market
Re:How the internet triumphed over Communism (Score:2)
wonderful (Score:5, Funny)
this is just scary.
-BlueLines
Re:wonderful (Score:2)
Re:wonderful (Score:4, Informative)
I do know that if you try searching for something in English on a Japanese search engine, you don't get that many results. Write it in katakana (Japanese characters used to write foreign words) and you get the real results.
Re:wonderful (Score:2, Informative)
Re:wonderful (Score:2)
No offense, but I think his search is a bit more accurate than your own. He posts the sequences so you can search as well.
Re:wonderful (Score:2)
Actually... (Score:2)
Re:wonderful (Score:2)
House-to-house search engine. (Score:5, Funny)
Stay where you are. We'll send some representatives to explain in person.
IN COMMUNIST CHINA (Score:2, Funny)
Bahaha (its good.) (Score:2)
Glad I don't live in China.... (Score:2)
Re:Most Chinese Sure Do Support Beijing (Score:2)
Yay (Score:2)
hmmm... difficult choice...
Um. (Score:2)
Google will always be at a disadvantage.... (Score:3, Insightful)
This need to put the communist stamp of approval on everything exists everywhere. For instance Catholics in China cannot be loyal to the Pope, he qualifies as a foreign entity. Plus we have already seen the Chinese kidnap the Tibetan Panchen Lama with hopes of replacing him with one that will be sympathetic to the Communists.
Speaking of the Chinese and competition one must be skeptical since the government will always put those things that aren't officially sanctioned in a position of disadvantage (blocking it access for example)
The second search superpower (Score:2)
FALUN+GONG (Score:2)
Re:FALUN+GONG (Score:4, Insightful)
I typed "Falun Gong", pressed enter, and got lots of results. All of them negative towards the Falun Gong Cult, mind you.
Hit number 4: "The Falun Gong cult misled me into killing my beloved uncle"
I repeated the test with Google, only this time, I searched for "Scientology". Pressing "Feeling Lucky" brought me right to the CoS homepage (and not to xenu.net, like it used to do).
So, to sum up:
Seems to me that even though the tools for censorship are quite different, they are in place indeed.
Police "Hotmail" Hot in Beijing (Score:3, Interesting)
how MSN is like China search engines (Score:2, Interesting)
so search for "search engine" on MSN (as other
What were you saying about censorship again?
Wasn't google sued by China (Score:2)
Looks like more of the same game to control their populace to me.
I don't see how this would help (Score:2)
Unless the chinese outright ban google after proclaming their solution 'better', this won't affect them at all. besides, who would use a search they *know* is being filtered by the government when they can use something that's *not*? (even if they get booted off the net for using politicaly sensitive terms)
Then and Mao (Score:2)
1946:
"All power Eminates From the barrel of a gun"
2003:
"All power Eminates From the most used Internet search engine"
Google becoming less wholesome (Score:3, Interesting)
Google, while technically advanced and lacking in intrusive ads, appears to have slowly drifted away from what most people would consider fair and impartial behaviour as it has grown in size. To take a recent example they have been refusing [infoshop.org] to index many non-corporate news sites in Google News, while at the same time deciding [theregister.co.uk] to start indexing press releases on the websites of major corporations.
While the crack down on independent news sites may have been unrelated to the invasion of Iraq it has certainly led some to speculate that they are under pressure not to index those who are not cheerleading the war. This is all before you get to the privacy issue [google-watch.org] and of course the allegations that one of their employees used to work for the NSA [google-watch.org].
PageRank can also be extremely annoying if you are looking for information on an unpopular subject that is similar to a much more popular one. The ability to disable PageRank of even to invert it, to show the results with the least links to them first, would improve things greatly. It may be that the lowest common denominator effects of PageRank are all too welcome for some people.
Search engines are a critical part of the present web infrastructure and a website is of little value if no one can find it. In the long term it would be of great benefit to all if Google could be replaced by with some sort of distributed search facility with no centralised control, where the individual user would have full control of the process.
Google considers press releases news? (Score:2)
Re:Google considers press releases news? (Score:2)
And this is different from other established news sources how?
Well I was under the impression Google News wasn't supposed to be a news source itself, anymore than the Google search engine is a source of web content. It is just an index of news sources. So the question is whether corporate press releases are, in themselves, news. You are of course right that "established news sources" will often pick up press releases as the basis of a story, but they don't repeat them all.
I would question whether
What do you get... (Score:2)
A half-ass Google knock-off.
Re:What is it gonna be called? (Score:2, Funny)