Censorsh*p

Browsing my RSS feeds this evening, I stumbled upon an interesting read. Apparently, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft got raked over the coals recently by Congress.

There's already been controversy surrounding the major internet search players recently-developed versions of their page for Chinese citizens - created in cooperation with China's censorship policies.

China filters thousands of web pages from it's citizens. Though it seems to have blocked a few random porn pages for some reason, it's main focus seems to be blocking out news and other information (including, for unknown reasons, pages on homosexuality and sexually transmitted diseases). I tried to find a list of pages that were known to be blocked, and found some good information from a study done at Harvard. It includes a page devoted to some of the highlights of the web pages filtered by China. The website choices range from confounding, to angering.

Anyway, Google appears to be blocking everything China wants them to, and more - why they block the home pages of some beer producers, I have no idea. More information on the random website blockage on CNet News.

Google's now-famous motto ("Don't be evil") has been getting thrown around a lot in light of their recent flirting with China. I don't know, no matter how badly you want to be providing services to China's huge population, this seems like too much bad publicity - why would an internet staple like Google want to get in bed with a government so concerned with blocking the Internet from it's citizens?