Reporters Without Borders just did a study of major search engines in China, and discovered that Yahoo is actually more evil than Google there – which takes quite a stretch.
Reporters Without Borders said it found Yahoo! to be the clear worst offender in censorship tests the organisation carried out on Chinese versions of Internet search engines Yahoo!, Google, MSN as well as their local competitor Baidu.
The testing threw up significant variations in the level of filtering. While yahoo.cn censors results as strictly as baidu.cn, search engines google.cn and the beta version of msn.cn (beta.search.msn.com.cn) let through more information from sources that are not authorised by the authorities.
While Microsoft has just said it does not operate censorship, Reporters Without Borders found that the Chinese version of its search engine displays similar results to those of google.cn, which admits to filtering its content. Searches using a “subversive” key word display on average 83% of pro-Beijing websites on google.cn, against 78% on msn.cn. By contrast, the same type of request on an uncensored search engine, like google.com (http://www.google.com/intl/zh-CN), produces only 28% of pro-Beijing sources of information. However, Microsoft like Google appears not to filter content by blocking certain keywords but by refusing to include web sites considered illegal by the authorities.The press freedom organisation is particularly shocked by the scale of censorship on yahoo.cn. first because the search results on “subversive” key words are 97% pro-Beijing. It is therefore censoring more than its Chinese competitor Baidu. Above all, the organisation was able to show that requests using certain terms, such as 6-4 (4 June, date of the Tiananmen Square massacre), or “Tibet independence”, temporarily blocked the search tool. If you type in one of these terms on the search tool, first you receive an error message. If you then go back to make a new request, even with a neutral key word, yahoo.cn refuses to respond. It takes one hour before the service can be used again. This method is not used by any other foreign search tools; only Baidu uses the same technique.
Go read their whole study. And when Google, Yahoo, and MSF try and tell you they’re “the good guys”, keep it in mind. I’ll join in calling bull**** on that and asking the Yahooligans “how do you sleep at night?”
A.L.:
I’m ready to stop using Google and Yahoo, but because of the incest they’re probably involved in most of the alternatives that are any good. Know any good search engine alternatives?
Well, I guess we can be grateful they don’t censor our content (assuming, of course, that they don’t).
Well gee wiz, what a surprise.
It just shows that Yahoo (and Google) both understand the political dynamic of the PRC: you are either the one holding the whip, or the one facing it.
Don’t be fooled by the shining cities springing up like mushrooms after a spring rain. Don’t be fooled by the outward displays of personal wealth (for the urban dwellers…).
The Armani-clad Mandarians of the new Middle Kingdom work off of the same dusty rulebook: serve and obey and all will be well. Don’t: [A] forget to give us our cut, [B] defy us.
Deny our authority, question our grasp on the ‘Mandate of Heaven’ and you WILL disappear.
Those are the rules, obey them or else. Or flee. Under the current system, those are your only choices.
[For those born free, or have gained freedom, be happy…and thankful.]
Nothing testifies to the ignorance of US citizens like the fact that China is marching along a great path to bury the US, and the US is too busy “killing arabs” to pay any attention.