Is it just me, or did someone not get the facts totally right? If a TechCrunch article is to be believed, search engines like Google and Yahoo! seem to be, once again, invisible in the nation of 1.3 billion. (The Net Nanny of fame, instead, encourages you to be more “supportive of local brands” — and search using the more local Baidu.) Judging by that article, it seems like the “harmonious society” (of officialspeak fame) is suddenly not all that “harmonious”, with all the “cyberwarring” in place.
Doesn’t do much to light up your day — I know. Until you throw a look at the facts: surfing along on China Netcom’s Beijing ADSL service, I see that the “cyberwar” has yet to be — even started. Why is it that my search for the Jingcheng Freeway on Google got through, as did a search for Swiss maps on Amazon.com? (Of course, searching for verboten terms on search engines outside China from inside China lands you the guaranteed connection reset. But I digress.) Let’s get right down to the nitty-gritty:
• Google.com: Works. (You’re not automatically redirected to Baidu.com)
• Google.cn: Works.
• Yahoo.com: Works.
• Yahoo.cn: Works.
• Amazon.com: Works.
• AltaVista.com: No way through. (”Safari can’t open the page “http://www.altavista.com/” because it could not connect to the server “www.altavista.com”.”)
• YouTube.com: Times out. (”Safari could not open the page “http://www.youtube.com/” because the server stopped responding.”)
• Live.com: Not quite. (You can get to the site alright, but you can’t search; a search interrupts your connection.)
• Excite: Works.
• Lycos: Works.
• Search.com: Works.
• Technorati: Works.
By all means a good try, but sorry — can’t tick every answer you gave me…
(Note: Tests were conducted around 23:00 Beijing time on October 18, 2007. As always, your mileage may vary…)
Tags: blognation, China, blognation China, Mainland China, blocking, Baidu, search engine
October 18th, 2007 at 5:23 pm
err, think you’ve missed the point. try again with blogsearch.google.com not just google.com. its the subdomains.
October 18th, 2007 at 5:32 pm
Still works for me… (of course, as long as there are no “verboten” terms).
October 18th, 2007 at 5:46 pm
[…] TechCrunch has been reporting that Google searches are redirected to Baidu. Adding in other reports, Duncan Riley concludes we’re in a cyberwar. Digital Marketing Blog finds Yahoo is also rerouted too. We have no way to confirm this rerouting without any feet on the street in China at the moment. David Feng writes that the TechCrunch take doesn’t hold up. […]
October 18th, 2007 at 6:56 pm
Our folks in mainland China can’t visit the Yahoo or Google sites pointed to by TechCrunch. They are on COL (China Online, http://www.col.com.cn ), the largest privately owned ISP in China.
October 18th, 2007 at 7:22 pm
[…] - here’s a blogger in Beijing, China saying that he’s getting to places TechCrunch says have been sent to Baidu, like Google. […]
October 18th, 2007 at 7:30 pm
[…] the honest truth. Today’s news coverage itself deserves some serious scrutiny. David Feng at BlogNation tests a number of sites from inside China and says access is relatively unchanged. The service […]
October 18th, 2007 at 7:38 pm
Honestly, this isn’t really new news. A lot of big media (I think it was Reuters) reported on China and its cyber activities - not specific to search, but just in general, months ago. I recall not one blog picked up the news, though - I was surprised, but I guess it didn’t have a really good “web 2.0″ hook until now.
It was also widely ignored that there were cyber attacks against estonia from what many believed it was Russia, but I think most of the blogs focus very tightly to one specific area of tech and that’s why that wasn’t really picked up either. I wish it would! I think this kind of stuff is interesting!
October 18th, 2007 at 7:45 pm
Google itself confirms with us there are problems:
http://searchengineland.com/071018-071828.php
October 18th, 2007 at 7:57 pm
It’s a total standstill where I’m at.
October 18th, 2007 at 9:11 pm
[…] Την ιστορία φαίνεται πως έφερε στο φως το Techcrunch, κι ενώ κάποιοι bloggers μέσα από την Κίνα το διαψεύδουν, άλλοι το […]
October 18th, 2007 at 10:58 pm
[…] today, including reports that Yahoo, Microsoft and Google are all being redirected. However, some people are stepping back and wondering if there’s confusion on the matter, and some veiled anti-Chinese jingoism […]
October 19th, 2007 at 6:38 am
Confirmed by Google and a good part of the international press
http://news.google.com/?ned=us&ncl=1122330985
The problem is that the firewall isn’t one black box that automatically bans everyone, a lot of it is ISP level blocks that are never rolled out at the same time. It’s not unusual to hear reports of blocks in Beijing but not Shanghai for example.
October 19th, 2007 at 6:49 am
Here’s the funny thing: at about 11 AM this morning my time (Beijing time), I did a search for something on Google. I was being instantly redirected to Google China! I tried again: nope, no luck here.
But then I went straight to google.cn (which worked) and clicked on “Google.com in English”. Quick redirect. I was through. No more redirects to Google.cn.
If I *have* to do search for terms that are close to (but not) verboten terms, I’d *much more* prefer Google. At least if it’s a malware site, they warn you. No such luck of Baidu last time ’round…
@Duncan: Your bit about the ISP-level blocks could be right; that could have been why when Wikipedia gets (un)blocked, only like one or two batches of cities come down with the block first, not the whole nation in one fell swoop.
October 19th, 2007 at 3:22 pm
[…] (Others argue that the redirects are limited to forbidden terms.) […]
October 19th, 2007 at 6:01 pm
[…] they got numerous reports from China that this block was indeed the case, yet Scoble linked over to a blogNation China blogger who is reporting it not to be the case. My guess is that this is indeed happening, but that the […]
October 21st, 2007 at 2:54 am
The Great Firewall of China doesn’t block very much - but if the federal government is embarrassed when something gets through, it cracks down on the local/regional ISPs with serious punitive measures.
So they run their censorship via a Chilling Effect on allowing people to view Free Speech, not via any master blacklist.
December 29th, 2007 at 4:48 am
I saw the former chief strategist of Netscape at the SECTOR conference and he presented on the cyber war threat. I had worked with Kevin Coleman before, but his presentation really impacted me. His inventory of cyber weapons included DEWs, TEDs, and self morphing/self encrypting malicious code. We are in serious trouble. Hackers of the world should unite and hit any country that launches a cyber attack!