19.582 Google

               Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 19, No. 582.
       Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
                   www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/
                        www.princeton.edu/humanist/
                     Submit to: humanist_at_princeton.edu

         Date: Mon, 30 Jan 2006 06:29:38 +0000
         From: James Cummings <James.Cummings_at_ota.ahds.ac.uk>
         Subject: Re: 19.577 Google

Re: Google censoring results in China.

Readers may be interested in seeing
http://blog.outer-court.com/censored/, which shows screenshots of the
differences between searches on certain phrases from inside and outside china.

Of course, you can see the differences for yourself if after a search
you add &meta=3Dcr%3DcountryCN to the URL. Interestingly, you also
get different results if you compare the UK and CAnada.

However (copied verbatim from the URL above), Google claims not to
censor its results:

"Google does not censor results for any search term. The order and
content of our results are completely automated; we do not manipulate
our search results by hand. We believe strongly in allowing the
democracy of the web to determine the inclusion and ranking of sites
in our search results. To learn more about Google's search
technology, please visit ..." Google's full help entry on
"Principles - Does Google censor search results?" (January 26, 2006).

"Google is committed to providing easy access to as much information
as possible. For Internet users in China, Google remains the only
major search engine that does not censor any web pages." The Google
Team, September 2004 (in a reply on why Google News self-censors some sources).

Food for thought,
-James
Received on Mon Jan 30 2006 - 02:00:28 EST