China to Build State-Run Search Engine

[living_stradivarius]

Ugh

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/14/techn ... .html?_r=1

China to Build State-Run Search Engine
By DAVID BARBOZA

SHANGHAI — In an apparent bid to extend its control over the Internet and cash in on the rapid growth of mobile devices, China plans to create its own government-controlled search engine.

The new venture would be fresh competition for Baidu.com, a private company that runs China’s dominant search engine. Baidu has seen its market share grow since Google retreated from the mainland earlier this year.

State-owned China Mobile — the world’s biggest cellphone carrier — and Xinhua, China’s official state-run news agency, signed an agreement Thursday to create a joint venture called the Search Engine New Media International Communications Co.

China already has the world’s largest number of Internet users, more than 420 million, and also the largest number of mobile phone subscribers, more than 800 million.

Private startup companies play a big role on the Web in China, but the government maintains tight control over Internet firms and censors what it deems to be dangerous or sensitive content.

Now, though, analysts say Beijing is pushing state-run companies to take a more active role online. China Central Television, the nation’s dominant broadcaster, is trying to develop its own online video site. Xinhua News Agency is trying to build a global platform of news providers using television and the Internet.

At the announcement of the joint venture in Beijing on Thursday, Zhou Xisheng, vice president of Xinhua, said the new company would build a leading search engine platform. But he also said the move was “part of the country’s broader efforts to safeguard its information security and push forward the robust, healthy and orderly development of China’s new media industry.”

Representatives of Baidu could not be reached for comment.

For years, Baidu has dominated Internet search in China holding a sizable lead over Google, which entered the market late. Earlier this year, Google pulled its search engine out of Beijing after complaining about censorship and online attacks that appeared to be coming from hackers in China.

Google now operates its Chinese-language search engine from Hong Kong; it is accessible from China but some results are censored by the government.

Most of China’s other big, private Internet companies are involved in online games and entertainment. But on Monday, Alibaba.com, one of the country’s biggest e-commerce sites, said the company and a fund co-founded by its chairman would acquire a 16 percent stake in the search engine Sogou, which is owned by the Chinese portal Sohu.com.

Yahoo, the U.S. portal, holds a 40 percent stake in the Alibaba Group.

[jbuck919]

China to Build State-Run Search Engine

They can call it the Chu-chu (sorry).

[living_stradivarius]

What's next, a state-run facebook? This is actually very disconcerting... The digital equivalent of giving Iran the bomb, though they stole a bunch their algorithms from Google. Larry Diamond might want to add a new chapter about such anti-liberating technologies.

[Daisy]

That's the only way a totalitarian country can control the flow of information.

I am reminded of Kaiser Wilhelm II, before and during WWI. He didn't like hearing bad news, and he didn't even know that many people were blaming him for the acceleration of the war, or even for starting it (which he didn't). So he had his own special edition of the newspaper printed, with gold leaf headlines, no less(!), so that he would only read good news and the kind of pleaqsant news he preferred to hear. No one was more surprised than he when he finally learned the truth.

China, which calls itself Communist, is in fact the most capitalistic country on Earth - but they are also a totalitarian country, much as they have been for centuries. Totalitarianism is very unhappy with the truth when that truth contradicts them. So by making their own isolated search engines and internet servers, they are effectively doing the same thing that Wilhelm II did, a century ago. Difficult to say where this kind of self-deception will lead.

[lennygoran]

>They can call it the Chu-chu<

Godzundheit! Regards, Len

[jbuck919]

That's the only way a totalitarian country can control the flow of information.

I am reminded of Kaiser Wilhelm II, before and during WWI. He didn't like hearing bad news, and he didn't even know that many people were blaming him for the acceleration of the war, or even for starting it (which he didn't). So he had his own special edition of the newspaper printed, with gold leaf headlines, no less(!), so that he would only read good news and the kind of pleaqsant news he preferred to hear. No one was more surprised than he when he finally learned the truth.

China, which calls itself Communist, is in fact the most capitalistic country on Earth - but they are also a totalitarian country, much as they have been for centuries. Totalitarianism is very unhappy with the truth when that truth contradicts them. So by making their own isolated search engines and internet servers, they are effectively doing the same thing that Wilhelm II did, a century ago. Difficult to say where this kind of self-deception will lead.

Kaiser Wilhelm was a kittycat in comparison. I think of China as a country so big that they can only crush, oppress and dehumanize their population a few million at a time.