Local Media Descend Upon Google Like Vultures. Yet Again…

No doubts here: this is Cold War 2.0.

(The World Cup, for what it’s worth, looks a fair bit like World War II 2.0: last night, Paraguay’s two extra goals sent Japan home, much like Little Boy and Fat Man “did their stuff” 65 years ago; England is out and the US “just joined” in the last minute, qualifying for the Group of 16.)

The Chinese media have started descending on Google, once again, like vultures feeding on their prey. This time it’s about Google about to lose its mandatory ICP licence, required if it is to use a mainland Chinese web server.

Of course, having engaged in anti-censorship moves to the extent of getting the US Congress all excited, Google stands a fat chance of getting its ICP licence renewed. This is especially the case since March, when it decided (very much “unilaterally”) to have its google.cn domain shift to the uncensored google.com.hk server. In response, the Chinese censors have upped the censorship on Google to such an extent that you are deemed reactionary (and hence eligible for a government-mandated connection reset) if you so much as Google up a carrot (which uses the character 胡, used also — no surprise — in the Chinese name of the Chinese president, Hu Jintao).

The site, as it stands right now, still leads to google.com.hk, but this time, you have to click a link to continue your trek. (So much for user-friendliness.)

The Beijing Evening News goes further in saying that Google Maps might be in a little bit of trouble as well, for it might run afoul of mapping rules. (The government doesn’t want you to leak stuff about sensitive sites — we’ll let you guess here what they must be.) Baidu, its biggest fiend, is in; Google.cn is not.

Meanwhile, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokespersons were quick to give the standard response of not mentioning Google by name while repeating that they welcome companies who do business in China in accordance with government regulations.

(And provided you don’t report to your home country’s congress when the Chinese government starts going after what you can’t publish.)

GoSo.cn: Here’s the “People’s Google”

Being in the “People’s China” (PRC), we have the — can we say this? — ”People’s Firewall” (Great Firewall; the former East Germany called their version, the Berlin Wall, the Anti-Fascism Protection Wall). With Google leaving China for obviously political reasons, the PRC now has, nearly a quarter after Google.cn’s departure, its own — “People’s Search Engine”.

The People’s Daily, known best as being the official party paper, has launched “People’s Search” (人民搜索; what an apt name!). Domain-wise, you’re going to be disappointed if you were looking for peoplessearch.cn; instead, it’s a semi-”fashionable” goso.cn. (On the Interwebs, the official organs try to get “snazzy” and “fashionable”, only to keep the censors.)

Of course, this being the official search engine, controversial content is left out. Look for the date of the Tian’anmen crackdown in Chinese, for example, and if you’re in China, you’ll get hits — which are not one bit related to the controversial event. If you’re outside China, interestingly enough, you get your connection to goso.cn cut. Yes, it’s as if the cyberofficials are saying: “We don’t want you US imperialists to go around messing about in our internal cyberaffairs in China” or something.

(Hint: the results for the Grass Mud Horse (草泥马 Caonima), as seen above, work well. That is, probably, until the Net mandarins censor the innocent alpaca as well… The Grass Mud Horse is commonly seen as representing the average Netizen, obviously in opposition to official mass censorship.)

Now for today’s dose of officialspeak: it’s claimed this search engine wants to “create an authoritative Chinese search engine” as well as “providing trusted search results”. As @spiked1989 notes on his tweet, there’s a funny side to this: just before goso.cn launched, Google, now in its uncensored version, had nearly all services become unusuable, Chinese Great Firewall be thanked.

@spiked1989 next ponders if a “People’s OS” will do for China. Your tech blogger, in the meanwhile, is taking a good, hard look at Google. With goso.cn out, it’s just a matter of time before all off Google might go under. There’s another factor in this: where does the official goso.cn leave the supposed-non-gov Baidu?

A New Google Interface?

While even the most benevolent of Chinese Netizens attempting to look up the nation’s president up on Google gets his or her connection immediately reset, Google can apparently care less about “harmonizing” its search results. Now firmly on Hong Kong territory, Google seems to have sported a new redesign.

It has to be said that, despite the appearance of a sidebar, the new Google interface is remarkably more spartan and simplistic. If you wanted a bit more of the controls, simply click “More” and you get many more options. Finally, the “big map” at the top of the page is a welcome addition — especially in our part of the world, with weird street names such as “4th Alley of Beichang Street” (that’s already a bit Chinglish-sounding, we admit).

Thing is, that’s just the techblog86 view (from David Feng). What’s your view?