Google

I'm confused again! Google's new and controversial Chinese site has baffled me. The controversy is, of course, over Google agreeing to censor search results to omit anything the sensitive souls who run this joint may not like. The up side is that the site does display this notice search results show this blog! But it is blocked in China! More confusingly, they do display the "something censored message". What can they find so offensive about the name of one of their cities? I decide to compare google.cn and google.com. google.com returns "about 597,000" results - google.cn has 298,000. What is going on? Are there really 299,000 links to Liuzhou to which the authorities object? Still, 298,000 is an improvement on Chinese search engine Baidu's miserable 110,000! On google.com the top three results are all mine! Yes!!! This blog is No. 3 On google.cn this blog is also No. 3, but my top place has been demoted to make way for, wait for it.....Liuzhou Government! This site does not appear on google.com at all! After that, the two are chaotically different. I give up! (Note I was searching for "Liuzhou". Searching using the Chinese characters brings up a whole different set of results.)

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