
Further to our earlier story on visitors to Google Blogsearch being redirected to Baidu in China, new reports have surfaced that would indicate that China has unilaterally blocked all three major search engines in China and is redirecting all requests to Baidu.Sort of an involuntary proxy, going somewhere other than where you thought.— Cyberwar: China Declares War On Western Search Sites, by Duncan Riley, TechCrunch, 18 October 2007
Note the distinction between censorship and this new action:
...the redirect to Baidu would indicate an economic motive; if the Chinese Government were serious about censorship alone we would have reports of page not found/ blocked messages, not redirects to Baidu. The Chinese Government is clearly using its censorship regime to the economic benefit of a Chinese owned (but NASDAQ listed) company.And also remember that there are U.S. government sponsored web panopticon projects. Research so far, or so far as we know.
-jsq
PS: Seen on Dancho Danchev's blog.
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