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Did They or Didn’t They? The China Search Conspiracy

It all started with a post on TechCrunch Thursday morning. Baidu Hijacking Google Traffic In China the post said. Apparently Internet searchers in China were suddently finding their Google searches being redirected to Baidu.com, China’s largest search engine.

The redirects seemed to be restricted to persons using particular ISPs with connections to the Chinese Government. The post was followed by a more frenzied one on TechCrunch stating Cyberwar: China Declares War on Western Search Sites. New reports were streaming in that the Chinese government was blocking access in China to all three major search engines (Google, Yahoo and Live Search) as well as YouTube and redirecting all requests to Baidu.

Conspiracies started to develop. Was it a political stunt by the Chinese government in retaliation for the US government awarding the Dalai Lama the Congressional Gold Medal? Danny Sullivan thought so. The timing suggested as much and it certainly wouldn’t be the first time Google sites were banned in China. Wikipedia entries suggested that censorship in general was being ramped up because of the Chinese Communist Party Congress held last week. Or was it a sneaky business partnership between the major Chinese ISPs and Baidu.com? Unlikely and Baidu disclaimed any involvement in the redirects.

Next came claims from PC World and Network World that the redirects didn’t exist. According to their sources, Internet users in Beijing and Shanghai were able to successfully access Google on Friday. Further testing from Beijing showed things were working OK as long as searches for forbidden or politically sensitive terms weren’t used.

So the question is: did they or didn’t they censor US search engines? Chinese officials rarely comment on censorship claims, making it difficult for users to determine when a site has been blocked or is inaccessible for other reasons.

Whatever the truth, the alleged redirects have now apparently been lifted.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from SiteProNews Blog