2nd UPDATE: Google Working To Halt Some China Searches
June 19 2009 - 2:31PM
Dow Jones News
Google Inc. (GOOG) said Friday it was "taking all necessary
steps" to block pornographic images and content from reaching users
of its Chinese service, a day after the company was warned about
pornography available through its search engine.
The Mountain View, Calif.-based company said in a statement it
has met with Chinese government representatives to discuss problems
with the company's Chinese service, through which pornographic
images and content have been available based on foreign language
searches.
Google was admonished late Thursday for the third time this year
by a government-backed Internet regulator for "disseminating large
amounts of pornographic and vulgar information."
It was not immediately clear, however, whether Google had been
ordered to suspend search services for foreign Web sites via its
Chinese Web site, as reported by the official Xinhua News Agency on
Friday.
One Google spokesman said he was unaware of any request to
suspend search activities and the company declined further requests
for clarification.
"We are undertaking a thorough review of our service and taking
all necessary steps to fix any problems with our results," the
company said in a statement. "This has been a substantial
engineering effort, and we believe we have addressed the large
majority of the problem results."
The move is the latest effort by Chinese authorities to clamp
down on online pornography, which has remained widely available to
Chinese Internet users. Pali Capital analyst Tian Hou said the
government has so far this year shut down as many as 2,000 porn
sites hosted on servers in China.
The government recently caused a stir when it announced that all
PCs sold in China would soon be required to carry pre-installed
filtering software designed to block pornography and other content
inappropriate for children.
Authorities have claimed the main targets of the so-called Green
Dam-Youth Escort software are pornography, online gambling, and
other sites deemed harmful to society, but critics fear that it
could be used to detect and blocking sensitive political
content.
With an online population of 298 million users, China already
operates the world's most extensive Internet filtering system,
commonly called the Great Firewall, which blocks access to
pornography and politically sensitive sites, including those
promoting Tibetan independence and the spiritual group Falun
Gong.
Google has struggled to expand in China, where homegrown Baidu
Inc.'s (BIDU) search engine controls about 60% of the market. Baidu
has been the target of Chinese censors in the past, but wasn't
mentioned in the latest crackdown on Google.
Standard & Poor's equity analyst Scott Kessler said the
crackdown underscores the considerable challenges Google faces in
China. "We view this as a notable risk," he said in a note.
-By Scott Morrison, Dow Jones Newswires; 415-765-6118;
scott.morrison@dowjones.com; and Aaron Back, Dow Jones Newswires;
(86-10) 6588-5848; aaron.back@dowjones.com