Reports: China 'hijacking' Google, Yahoo, Microsoft search sites
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When Chinese Web surfers try to the big three U.S. search engines, they're reportedly redirected to Baidu. Recent political events, including Dalai Lama's American award, may be to blame.
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In a digital arms race, China's Internet controls might be used for more than censorship.
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China has been accused of blocking access to Google News by the media watchdog, Reporters Without Borders. The Paris-based pressure group said the English-language news site had been unavailable for the past 10 days.
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(InfoWorld) - U.S. Congressman Chris Smith said that top American technology companies are failing to prevent censorship and other human rights abuses in China, writing Saturday in a letter to The Wall Street Journal. "There is enormous profit potential, but entering the Chinese market means challenging a repressive regime on basic human rights tenets. Sadly, some of America's largest tech firms are currently failing this new test of corporate responsibility," wrote Smith, a Republican from New Jersey and a member of the Foreign Services Committee. Smith said that representatives from Yahoo, Google, Cisco Systems, and Microsoft appeared at an April, 2006 Congressional hearing he convened and "they all acknowledged that their companies have enabled dictatorships to censor democracy and human rights promotion on the Internet." He also said that "Yahoo and Cisco have evenÂ helped the Chinese government incarcerate Internet usersÂ for pro-democracy activity." Court documents and evidence from human rights groups have shown that Yahoo's Hong Kong subsidiary, Yahoo Holdings (Hong Kong), cooperated with Chinese police in cases against journalist Shi Tao and political activist Li Zhi, and that material provided by the company may have led to their conviction. Shi was sentenced to 10 years' imprisonment, Li to eight years. In January, Smith re-introduced "The Global Online Freedom Bill of 2007," would give individuals like Shi and Li the right to seek redress in U.S. courts, if they believe their freedom of expression was compromised by a U.S. company. Internet companies would be required to inform the Office of Global Internet Freedom -- to be created if the bill is signed into law -- of keywords and search parameters they are filtering. They must also notify the Office of any restrictions on Internet information access with which they must comply in order to do business in a foreign country. Companies can be fined up to $2 million for violation of these principles, with individuals liable for up to $100,000. The bill provides for $50 million to establish the Office of Global Internet Freedom. The bill cited nine countries, including China, Iran, and North Korea, for blocking, restricting, and monitoring the Internet and its citizens' use of it, according to a January 8 statement from Smith's office. Later in January, Yahoo, Google, Microsoft, and Vodafone Group agreed to develop aÂ code of conductÂ with a coalition of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to promote freedom of expression and privacy rights. The parties involved said that they would develop a framework that would hold signatories accountable for their actions in the areas of freedom of expression and privacy rights. Eighteen NGOs are participating in the guidelines' development, including: Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School; Business for Social Responsibility; Electronic Frontier Foundation; Human Rights Watch; and Reporters Without Borders. One observer felt the tech firms were now between a rock and a hard place. "Technology companies now have the unenviable position of moving into the media realm, which is tightly controlled in China," said Danny Levinson, publisher of BDL Media's ChinaCSR.com and the China CSR monthly magazine. "When dealing with corporate social responsibility in China, foreign technology companies are easier targets than firms in other sectors because they are much more high profile than, say, the mining companies providing poor labor oversight and textile companies polluting the environment," Levinson said.
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SAN FRANCISCO - Google Inc.'s recently launched news service in China doesn't display results from Web sites blocked by that country's authorities, raising prickly questions for an online search engine that has famously promised to "do no evil."   Dynamic Internet Technology Inc., a research firm striving to defeat online censorship, conducted tests that found Google omits results from the government-banned sites if search requests are made through computers connecting to the Internet in China.    Steered by an identical search request, computers with a United States connection retrieved results from the sites blocked by China...
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(InfoWorld) - Google will do better in China, but don't look for the company to dominate the market anytime soon, the company's top executive said Thursday. "Although it does not appear we are number one in the market, it looks like we are now in a situation where we are quite competitive," Eric Schmidt, Google's chairman and CEO, told investors during a conference call. Google hasÂ invested heavily in China,Â setting up R&D centersÂ and developing aÂ search engine that censorsÂ results that government officials aren't likely to approve of. But despite Google's best efforts and the hiring of former Microsoft executiveÂ Kai-fu LeeÂ to lead its Chinese operations, the company trails far behind local rival Baidu.com. Google is the sixth most-visited Web site in China, with 4.4 percent of respondents choosing the search engine as the site they visit most often, according to an IDC survey released earlier this year. By comparison, Baidu ranked third, with 11.2 percent of respondents saying they visit the Chinese search engine more than any other site. Baidu also has a strong lead over Google in China's online advertising market, with a 16.5 percent share of the market in 2006, IDC said. Baidu earned US$105.2 million from online ads in 2006, making it the number two player in the market behind Sina, which runs China's top Internet portal. Google China ranked sixth in the country's online advertising market, with revenue of $38.7 million and a 6.1 percent share of the market, IDC said. Despite trailing behind its main rival, Google is upbeat about its prospects in China. Speaking to investors on Thursday, Google CFO George Reyes said the company's growth rate in China was "healthy." Schmidt said Google has a strong team in China and offers Chinese search capabilities that match or exceed those from rivals. "It's a very good start and although we don't think that this will result in an immediate huge success, we think that the tenacity of Google ... will bring significant victories in China over the next few years," he said.
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(InfoWorld) - A Chinese journalist jailed in part due to e-mail evidence provided by a Yahoo subsidiary plans to file a lawsuit in the U.S. against the Internet company within the next few months. "We're also trying to line up other victims for a class-action. We've been in touch with a few others, but we haven't signed anyone up yet. It's a very sensitive issue because there could be reprisals against their families," said Albert Ho, a legislator in Hong Kong and lawyer in the case, in a telephone interview. A Yahoo spokeswoman in Hong Kong could not be reached for comment. A U.S.Â civil suit against YahooÂ on behalf of Shi Tao, a Chinese journalist convicted of "divulging state secrets" by Beijing in partÂ due to an e-mail Yahoo providedÂ to Chinese authorities, will likely be filed in either New York or California, Ho said. Tao's e-mail, sent from a Yahoo account in April, 2004 to a pro-China democracy Web site in New York, contained a Beijing order for officials to be on guard for unrest and dissident activity ahead of the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. Tao was sentenced to 10 years in prison. The new lawsuit would come just months after Ho filed a complaint to Hong Kong authorities against Yahoo Holdings (Hong Kong) on behalf of Tao. It also comes at a time whenÂ international pressure is increasingÂ on Internet companies to handle the private data of their users more carefully, particularly with respect to human rights. Amnesty International and Reporters Without Borders have both criticized Yahoo over the Tao incident, and a group of U.S. lawmakersÂ blasted a group of Internet companiesÂ earlier this year, including Yahoo, Google, Microsoft, and Cisco Systems, for failing to uphold free expression in China. "Internet companies should not disclose personal information that could violate the basic human rights of their users," Ho said. He said Tao, who is not a U.S. citizen, could file a lawsuit in the country under the Alien Tort Claims Act of 1789. The group has not yet decided on a U.S. law firm to retain for the case, nor would Ho divulge the specific strategy or damages the group intends to seek. The Hong Kong case remains pending because an investigation by authorities has not been finished yet, Ho said. Yahoo could face a fine, a civil lawsuit, or both if Hong Kong's Office of the Privacy Commissioner for Personal Data rules that it illegally divulged personal data used to put Tao in jail. The plaintiffs argue that Yahoo Hong Kong had no right to comply with a request from China for Tao's personal data, and requested that the office investigate the matter. Yahoo has denied any involvement in the case by its Hong Kong arm. The company has said any information provided to Chinese authorities in this case would have come from Yahoo's operations in China, rather than Hong Kong. However, Yahoo's Chinese and Hong Kong operations were both part of the same corporate entity, Yahoo Hong Kong, at that time In 2005, Alibaba.com acquired Yahoo's Chinese operations as part of a deal that saw Yahoo take a stake in the Chinese Internet company.
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The dominance of Google in the search space is almost written in stone in North America, but there may yet be some populous spots in the world where the market is wide open. Now its main Chinese competitor has launched a new assault.
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A Chinese company is suing Google&#39;s China subsidiary for copying its name, saying the U.S. search engine&#39;s registered Chinese name is too similar to its own and has harmed its operations.
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Google&#39;s recently launched news service in China doesn&#39;t display results from Web sites blocked by that country&#39;s authorities, raising prickly questions
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Google, the internet business that made its mantra &quot;do no evil&quot;, is accused of pandering to attempts by the Chinese government to censor certain websites.
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Chinese hackers have infiltrated German government computers with spy programmes, the news magazine Der Spiegel reported Saturday. via Earth Times
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Microsoft Expanding Live Search into China Under a deal with China Telecom, Microsoft will be serving a Chinese version of Live Search to China Telecom&#8217;s 25 million broadband customers.  The People&#8217;s Daily Online reports: Microsoft has been looking for an opportunity to get into the search market since Baidu.com, Yahoo! and Google joined. The launch of Live [...]
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Microsoft Corp , Google Inc   and Yahoo Inc  have breached the Universal  Declaration on Human Rights in colluding with China to censor  the Internet, Amnesty International said on Thursday.
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Backed by &quot;armies&quot; of cyber-police, China is spearheading an increasingly sophisticated movement by repressive regimes to restrict the Internet, a global media watchdog said in its annual report.
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Google technology will power China.com's online search engine under the terms of a partnership announced.
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Computer scientists have discovered a potentially serious flaw in Google&#39;s desktop search utility that could allow attackers to steal information.