So here’s a google search to show students: try searching the Chinese version and the US version of Google for “Tiananmen”. As in Tiananmen Square. Remember? If you’re in China, the government would rather you didn’t. (via Stayfree, Pen to Paper and others)
7 thoughts on “stark difference”
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Martin
Try “sweatshops” too. Then ask yourself what reason a government which is supposedly
opposed to capitalism could possibly have for not allowing that word to go through
a search engine.
Jill
Huh? The results look the same?
Elin
Actually, my google searches give completely different results here in Bergen than they did in Boston – although I didn’t try anything political yet… just silly stuff like slipcovers etc.
Martin
Weird. I got no results in the Chinese one, and bunches of pictures in the US one.
Gro
hi jill, this is out of topic, but you are here:
http://www.fistfulofeuros.net
good luck!
Francois Lachance
Quite apart from the who seen what question, there is the interesting question of what happens to rankings. In a combined search of two or more regaional search engines, how would the results be ranked? What would a combined Norwegian and Canadian view of the materials avaiable look like? What struck me in the two different set of images was the geopolitical considerations of what gets published where (i.e. what struck me in the US-based google.com was the militaristic impression — a military power tends to spot military might or people with military training and the military as part of their lives see weaponary as part of the scenary and a way of reading the historic record). For some reason (French spelling?) I did a search with an alternate spelling… tiannamen … and behold a much more mixed set of images.
Claus
> Weird. I got no results in the Chinese one …
Naturally – because Google submitted to censorship in Mainland China.
> Actually, my google searches give completely different results here in Bergen
Here in Germany, I couldn’t invoke google.cn at all. I sent a question to Google Germany, but didn’t get an answer, yet. Via the links in thsi post it worked. (I wonder if I’ll be getting one *at all*!)