Microsoft's Bing Halts Autofill Feature in China, Citing Local Laws

Microsoft's Bing said it has suspended the autofill suggestion feature in China to comply with Chinese laws, while some users in the country said the search engine had become inaccessible. From a report: By Friday, Bing's China website had a notice saying it "was required by the relevant government agency to suspend the search auto suggestion feature in mainland China for 30 days" as per Chinese laws. It didn't explain how the laws regulated the autofill function. Starting around Thursday, some China-based users of Bing found they couldn't open the search engine's website, though others could still use the service.

Bing -- the last major foreign search engine operating in China after Google pulled its search engine from the country in 2010 -- was still unavailable for some users on Friday in at least nine provinces and regions including Beijing, Guangdong, Hubei, Shanghai and Sichuan, according to checks by The Wall Street Journal. Bing's service disruption is the latest headache for Microsoft in China, where the American technology juggernaut has been caught in increasingly difficult situations this year as Beijing tightens its control of online content.

Stop dealing with China.

[Zedrick]

Just stop. They are using our money to a) build up their army and b) turning us (us=the whole world) into hostages, as we throw money to the Chinese state and at the same time lose the means to produce what we need for ourselves. (also, this is not some stupid anti-communist rant, I used to be a member of my local communist party when I was young and idealistic, and if you think the workers rule China you need to take that other pill.)

Re:

[fropenn]

We have no choice. China is one of the, if not THE most powerful country in the world. To not deal with them means we are ceding control of world to China.

China has an interesting flavor of communism in that it contains many elements of capitalism (although ruled by an autocracy). Given the evidence of Trump's goals to be the un-elected, permanent leader now coming out, the U.S. isn't that far off honestly (capitalist in its economy but politically an autocracy).

Re:

[K. S. Kyosuke]

the U.S. isn't that far off honestly

It seems to me that one need to distance oneself a little bit from both of the countries in question to see how ridiculous this claim is.

Re:

[fropenn]

If it weren't for a few brave Republican leaders, governors, and non-partisan civil servants, we could easily have had an authoritarian installed as the U.S. president. It could still happen in 2024 as Trump has been working hard to remove those people who stood up to his power grab from their positions. Once you have an authoritarian leader, they will do anything to stay in power and soon the distance between the U.S. and China looks very narrow indeed.

Re:

[K. S. Kyosuke]

China *just* banned reviews of Xi's book on Amazon. In the US this would violate the First Amendment in a way that even the current rigged SCOTUS couldn't possibly support. But please do tell me how China and US look the same to you...

Re:Stop dealing with China.

[splutty]

Chine does not have an interesting flavour of communism. It has something that has absolutely nothing, at all, in any way, shape, or form, to do with communism.

Oligarchy, possibly. Fascism, most definitely. Communism, not even slightly.

Re:

[Tyr07]

We have no choice. China is one of the, if not THE most powerful country in the world. To not deal with them means we are ceding control of world to China.

No, by dealing with them you are ceding the control of the world to China. Exact opposite.

They're not the most powerful. They're just the cheapest for manufacturing because they pay less in research because they steal technology and manufacturing costs are cheap their as they abuse their laborers.

Re:

[Tablizer]

If we fully isolate them, then they'll have less to lose in a conflict, and thus more likely to wage war.

Re:

[jellomizer]

Giving up 1.4 billion potential customers is a tough pill to swallow.

China has a giant population, access in its own borders to a lot of raw material, it is located in an easy spot for trade across many different large economies.
In short it isn't America fault for losing to China, but China's fault for not being #1 already.

If the US were to stop trade with China, it is going to hurt the US a lot. Because when it comes down to it, an economy needs customers. China is the biggest customer base, so companies

Re:

[splutty]

I want you to walk around you house with a notepad (or a tablet, I don't care), and write down everything you see. Then go online and try to figure how much of that is from China, or uses parts sourced from China (including that tablet).

THEN think about what your life would look like if everything you just found cost 5 times as much.

Re:

[Rhipf]

Would having 1/5 of the crap that we buy because it is cheap really be a bad thing though? 8^)

If you put yourself into China

[RitchCraft]

... you're bound to get something you didn't want. Just pull out already. China is sick and you're going to catch something nasty by staying in.

All 7 users will be

[Tablizer]

really pissed.

Type in Tiananmen

[sir_smashalot_3rd]

and find 'protests' and 'massacre' as suggestions ? Can't have that now can we ?

Surprised they ever allowed it in the first place.

[jonadab]

Fundamentally, a search suggestions feature notices what lots of people are searching for, and suggests it to even more people, amplifying trends. This works very quickly, because it's automated, and can result in trending topics going viral very very quickly. Possibly so quickly that the censors don't have time to react and shut it down before millions of people read about whatever it is. This is really BAD if you're trying to prevent anyone from every finding any information that isn't approved by the

Re:

[jonadab]

Though, I suppose you could build a search suggestions feature, that uses suggestions handed down from political authorities, without regard for what other people are searching for. THAT should be manageable in China.