BEIJING – All services at Google China are up and running again after government officials gave the green light to the search giant’s “inappropriate content” filtering system. Some Google.cn features had been blocked since June as part of China’s effort to sanitize the Web.Chinese censors met with Google representatives in July to iron out the kinks in the system, which officials claimed allowed Chinese citizens to access links to pornographic and “unapproved” foreign websites. Google changed its search algorithm right away, but censors approved the changes only late last week.
However, according to departing Google Greater China President Kaifu Lee, the government also praised Google for having a “serious attitude” about fighting salacious content. Lee also said his departure from the search giant was not related to the so-called “porn row.” He left to launch an angel investing firm that will provide financial assistance to young Chinese entrepreneurs working in the internet and mobile technology sectors, he noted.
In addition to porn, Google China also filters for other “sensitive” content. For example, the engine returns no results for searches on “Tiananmen,” the Beijing district in which soldiers killed several hundred students in 1989 in order to quell a political protest, or for “Xu Zhiyong,” a human rights attorney who was detained for about a month for political reasons.
Google informs Chinese users it has filtered their results when presenting a filtered list.
YouTube, the video-sharing site owned by Google, has been blocked since March and remains inaccessible in China.
