Chinese search engines "hijacked" : US analysts

[mobilebadboy]

US Internet search engines in China were being hijacked and directed to Chinese-owned Baidu, analysts said Wednesday, speculating that this may be retaliation for the White House award to exiled Tibetan leader the Dalai Lama.

Analysts at Search Engine Roundtable, a website focusing on Internet search, said Chinese users trying to search on Google, Yahoo and Microsoft websites were being directed to the Chinese search engine.

"It seems like China is fed up with the US, so as a way to fight back, they redirected virtually all search traffic from Google, Yahoo and Microsoft to Baidu, the Chinese based search engine," the analysts wrote.

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php...show_article=1

[KLB]

Ya, I've been seeing articles about this today. Censorship in China is pretty heavy. While my mother was over in China for the past couple of weeks for the Special Olympic games her and others were finding email they were trying to send back here to the U.S. censored or simply never delivered whenever they tried to report on issues with unfair treatment of non-Chinese athletes or unsportsmanlike like conduct of the Chinese athletes.

I really doubt it was as much retribution against the U.S. as much as controlling what the Chinese people could see.

[Westech]

This is why I won't invest China or in businesses who rely heavily on doing business in China. It's a huge market, but the government's just way too unpredictable.

While my mother was over in China for the past couple of weeks for the Special Olympic games her and others were finding email they were trying to send back here to the U.S. censored or simply never delivered whenever they tried to report on issues with unfair treatment of non-Chinese athletes or unsportsmanlike like conduct of the Chinese athletes.

It will be interesting to see if this kind of thing happens during the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.

[KLB]

It will be interesting to see if this kind of thing happens during the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.

I think it will be much harder for them to censor the 2008 Olympics. There will be much more attention on those games. There was barely any attention on the 2007 Special Olympic games and with the equestrian events there wasn't even a media presence. Thus far I have found barely any news coverage of the equestrian events. At most the articles are a few small local papers talking about a medal the home town athlete won. What gets overlooked in those articles are that in some cases there would be only three or fewer competitors in a specific class because of disqualifications. Thus everyone who completed the class would have medaled. In one case, my mother reported that a class consisted of three competitors, two of which got disqualified when their mount left the show ring because officials forgot to close the gates for those two individuals (they remembered to close the gate for the third competitor). As a result, the one remaining competitor won the gold.

Between blatant impropriety and incompetence, the equestrian events sound more like they were part of a spoof movie rather real life. You can read all about what happened on the blog post my mother wrote once she got home and was no longer subjected to Chinese censors: http://blog.environmentalchemistry.c...-games-in.html

[Cutter]

"One thing that I was intrigued by was how well many of China's intellectually handicapped competitors could speak English and discuss the events quite intelligently. Apparently others noticed too, and questioned it. They were informed that China classified impoverished people as being intellectually handicapped. In other words, it was social status and not intellectual capacity that determined whether a Chinese individual could compete in Special Olympics."

What the hell? Who makes the rules for these things? In next year's summer olympics will the Chinese be allowed to use steroids and performance enhancing drugs?

[KLB]

What the hell? Who makes the rules for these things? In next year's summer olympics will the Chinese be allowed to use steroids and performance enhancing drugs?

There is no drug testing in the Special Olympics. Presumably this is because many of the athletes are on so many meds due to their conditions.