Some Chinese bloggers are so mad that their internet service providers have been blocking Google.com over the past week or so, they've resorted to cyber-voodoo:
The text on the top left says: "This person has made it impossible to access Google."
The text on the bottom right says: "A click on this website equals one needle prick."
Ouch!!
It is indeed fascinating that Google's Sergey Brin now says Google is reconsidering whether its launch of a censored Chinese service, Google.cn, was the right thing to do.. especially given that only 1 percent of Chinese internet users actually use Google.cn: most still prefer to use Google.com despite the fact that it's harder to access.
What a revelation...Chinese users do in fact prefer non-censored products over the neutered versions when given the choice.. despite all corporate yammering about cultural differences and the need to respect the "Chinese way," yada yada, and other such b.s.
The folks at China Web 2.0 Review point out that Chinese bloggers are annoyed with Google for not discussing Google.com's blocking problems with Chinese users on Google's official Chinese blog. There are technical ways to circumvent the blockage which bloggers are sharing with each other - and many people think Google ought to be helping spread the word about circumvention tools if they want to show that they're really on the users' side.
Reuters has another report about Chinese netizen frustration here.
someone did evil, but google not.
Posted by: iridiumcao | June 08, 2006 at 12:49 AM
Perhaps the best thing about Google's going in to China is that, maybe more than anything else, is serving to educate the world about Chinese internet censorship.
Posted by: China Law Blog | June 08, 2006 at 11:35 AM
A Chinese kid in a "net bar" once showed me how to get pass the filtering by using this thing called "Proxy Hunter":
http://www.baidu.com/s?wd=proxy+hunter&cl=3
Appearantly most school boys in China know how to get pass the filtering and find porn...
Posted by: bobby fletcher | June 08, 2006 at 11:17 PM
in which Chinese sites can I see this voodoo doll? I want to write news about this...
Posted by: | June 09, 2006 at 02:01 AM
I linked to a couple of them in my post, here: http://zhanbin.com/blog/239.html
and here:
http://blog.donews.com/keepwalking/archive/2006/06/01/898146.aspx
Posted by: Rebecca MacKinnon | June 10, 2006 at 11:30 AM
i hate man use baidu to touch things related google.
Posted by: ShellehS | June 25, 2006 at 10:22 AM
the man China Law Blog is a insignificant guy. is here anything referred to porn?
Posted by: ShellehS | June 25, 2006 at 10:28 AM