China Wants to Close Down Google

[Joeshie]

Leave it to China to make even the American government look like a shining beacon of perfection.

 

[stompy]

You see, this is why, as an Australian, I don't want Conroy's plan to succeed... damn, we (Australians) really need some sort of referendum for freedom of speech (and expression)...

 

[Marv21]

If you think about it this is either 1 of 3, a combination etc.

1. China chinching the freedom of the people, which may or may not resolve in revolution.
2. China scapgoating the internet for a forum of EVIL!
3. China is trying to cut foreign access/ideas. They are a xenophobic governement.

Or they could be shutting it down because they realize the Escapist is planning their downfall!


If you think about things over China's long and bloody history, it has always been a power struggle to hold the interest of the people and the interest of the wealthy/landowners. Its kind of like 1984, but less absolute, the governments want the people to be blissfully unaware of the outside. They want to destroy the freedom by creating a kind of war senario, also in 1984 when the governments are warring so they can get their citizens into the wartime feel of ration and limiting the needs of the humans, decreasing the quality of life without the governement being responsible.

This is just a new way of trying to take hold an secure a lasting kingdom, by limiting the rights for humans.

I find their government obsolete! Obsolete! Obsolete! *If anyone gets the twilight zone reference*

 

[Blair Bennett]

wow.. no google. How ever will we find another search engine?

I know it seems stupid now, however, Google is a multi-billion dollar conglomerate. If they can't defend themselves from the idiocy of a government looking for someone else to blame, I doubt that any other search engine will. If Google is removed entirely, what stops people from doing to same to other search engines. After all, it would be easier, most are much smaller than Google, and in the case of Yahoo, etc. things could still work, it's the same type of media, being posted by the same type of people. However, the wrong people are being prosecuted because of it.

 

[Arbre]

I thought that Google had reached an agreement with the chinese government to censor "inappropriate" search results. I'm sure I read that sometime on Slashdot.

It is correct.
Under cover of protecting people and taking care of the children of the nation, they strike down any opposer to the one true opinion.

Once again the people in power never cease to amaze me in how out of touch they are with how the Internet actually works.

The Chinese government actually perfectly understands how internet work. It's a tool that, although being accessed via multiple private companies, allows access to plenty of content which you can quickly find with search engines.

Since they cannot erase the unpatriotic drivel, they try to block it, or more precisely, block paths that lead to it, by making it impossibly hard to reach such content via the most simple tools accessible to the average Chinese, if you're not already in the know.

The best they can do is get Google banned from all Chinese IPs (or ban all Chinese IPs from Google.) I honestly don't see what the problem with googles is, it's like asking a librarian to find you a book. If you ask for porn and then try to kill the librarian because they brought you porn, there's something wrong with YOU. not the people who make porn, and not the person who brought you the porn. it's YOU.

As I understand it, that's what China is trying to do, just block it from all their IPs. China most definitely does not have the power to shut down Google itself, but they can, with relative ease, simply block Google from their IPs.

As for the librarian porn analogy, it's more along the lines of person A asking the Librarian for porn, and person B shutting down the library for having porn in the first place. The one doing the searching and the one doing the punishing are seperate people.

It's actually like you're asking for a book about veggie cooking, so the librarian hands you one called "Famous Italian Desserts from the 19th Century", with suggestive pictures on page twelve.

It's even worse [http://www.cracked.com/article_16746_9-innocent-google-searches-that-get-porn-on-first-page.html].

 

[Samah]

I didnt realise that google actually had any of thier content actually on their site, dont search engines just provide links and take short text extracts and pictures from other sites and therefore those are the ones that need taking down and not google.

Actually Google keeps a cache of most of its search results, but I don't know whether they store that themselves or take it from somewhere like archive.org.

 

[Alvandera]

Noooo! Google is my life. Without Google I would go on a murdering rampage. Then again, chances of them being able to *actually* shut it down, would be very slim.

 

[BigbadaBEEF]

Google is not a site. It is a search engine. It can be used to find bad sites, but dogs can do bad things as well, like sniff peoples balls.

Hey, let's ban dogs now shall we?

Couldn't have put it better myself

 

[Samah]

On the flip side Kevin Dudd Rudd wants to filter the internet, good luck...

Actually I believe the filter is being pushed more by Stephen Conroy than Rudd. Regardless, it'll be gone in the next federal election. I'm sure it'll be one of the Coalition's "vote for us!" campaigns.
The only thing that worries me is that they may just clear the blacklist but ensure the infrastructure is still there. This gives them the control to silently filter things.

 

[ChromeAlchemist]

wow.. no google. How ever will we find another search engine?

How about Dogpile? because it includes google results, as well as every other search engine on earth.

 

[godcomplex23]

Aren't the Chinese people still people? I'm sure they don't like their government all over their affairs telling them how to act and behave and such. Some if not most of the Chinese people could be millionaires over night through capitalism. They could make millions selling bottled water at concerts. I think they have concerts... thank god we get a new leader every 4-8yrs

 

[xitel]

I thought that Google had reached an agreement with the chinese government to censor "inappropriate" search results. I'm sure I read that sometime on Slashdot.

Yes, they did. The Chinese version of Google's search engine (www.google.cn) will not return certain webpages that disparage the Chinese government, after the end of a long and heated negotiation between China and Google. But now China is saying they want to shut down Google completely in China, although I don't think they're saying they want it shut down worldwide (unless I'm wrong, that's just what I understood from what I read). They are trying to halt rebellion by stopping people from voicing dissent, and from seeing what other people have to say bad about the government. It's the idea that if the Chinese people only see the good side of their government and aren't allowed to talk about the bad part, it just won't exist. In other words, sweeping it under the rug.

 

[Antiparticle]

Bad China. It's very unfortunate they (the Chinese government, that is) continue to act this way.

 

[ChocoFace]

Google is not a site. It is a search engine. It can be used to find bad sites, but dogs can do bad things as well, like sniff peoples balls.

Hey, let's ban dogs now shall we?

Couldn't have put it better myself

Does Google sniff people's balls too, or am i missing something...or maybe dogs give you an incredibly easy way to porn/other 'unacceptable' material.
Google is the place, thanks to which you can find almost anything in the internet and it turns out (IMO) the Chinese government isn't happy with that, so they decided to restrict access to it for the people in China.
'How' they're gonna do it is another question, though.

 

[O maestre]

I didnt realise that google actually had any of thier content actually on their site, dont search engines just provide links and take short text extracts and pictures from other sites and therefore those are the ones that need taking down and not google.

Yes...but governments are stupid

actually google caches alot of the searched sites, then there are all other google sites, this is not just google search engine but also things like news feeds and all other google syndication sites, like youtube

 

[Jursa]

And how do they intend to get their satellite out of space? I'm also quite interested in how they intend to stop the biggest search engine in the world, especially when it's not even based in that area. As powerful as they may be... their mind control plan will have to be delayed a bit...

 

[Zer_]

The government is trying to fight the inevitable. This is just as foolish as anti-piracy laws. The freely available information the internet provides many humans can't be stopped. There is no way any government can stop a social evolution.

 

[Danny Ocean]

As if. If they do this every single hacker on earth is going to through a hissy fit and crash the internet. Then what will they do!?

I'm sure they would love nothing more than to see the internet go away.

Okay, just think about what would happen if the internet just ceased to be.

Consider world banks. Satellites. Communications. Military hardware and several very taxable web-based retailers.