Beijing, China — Google is once again regaining its position in China after a row in which authorities accused the US Internet giant of illegally disseminating pornographic content, as the Chinese authorities now approved of Google’s efforts to filter porn from search results on its China portal following state-led criticism of the links, the former head of Google China KaiFu Lee said on Monday.
China has criticized Google of illegally disseminating pornographic content.
Chinese authorities have criticized Google of illegally disseminating pornographic content as part of a wider suppression on what authorities claim is unhealthy Internet content. Google’s sites have been intermittently blocked in recent months.
The fracas with Beijing extinguished in July, after government officials met with Google and revoked a suspension of some features on its site, Kai-Fu Lee, former president of Greater China for Google, wrote on a Chinese blog.
Kai-fu Lee, who just last week resigned as Google Greater China president, said his resignation had nothing to do with the squabble, adding he had delayed his departure for two months to handle the crisis, which he said was now “over”.
State-run media and a Chinese anti-intellectual watchdog in June blocked Google for allowing pornographic links to appear in search results on Google.cn, the company’s China portal. Chinese government also briefly banned nationwide access to Google.com and other Google Web sites and ordered the company to suspend “foreign Web site search services” until the links were removed.
Google changed its search algorithm to filter pornographic results, and the government has “approved Google’s positive attitude” and “very good work” to eliminate pornographic content, and “therefore allowed (Google) to restore all of the services, he told reporters. He said multiple heads of government bureaus repealed the suspension and praised Google for having a “serious attitude” toward fighting anti-intellectual content.
Communist Party Internet authorities had publicly warned Google to censor all pornography from its searches, while constantly ignoring to any lurid material available through Baidu, Google’s Chinese competitor.
Google.cn has long removed some results for sensitive searches. The search engine displays a notice that some results have been filtered for search terms such as “Tiananmen,” the square in Beijing around which soldiers killed hundreds to dispel a student democracy protest in 1989, or for the names of major political leaders. The search engine currently displays no search results at all for “Xu Zhiyong,” the name of a human rights lawyer recently detained for about one month. The results screen says the search “may touch on content that does not conform with the related laws, regulations and policies” and that results cannot be displayed.
A Google spokeswoman asked for comment about the search filtering last month said Google, as a global company, “should strictly comply with local laws, regulations and policies.”
Lee, 47, will be starting a new venture in Beijing aimed at assisting young Chinese entrepreneurs develop Internet and mobile computing technology, he said on the blog. He has so far raised 115 million dollars.
“We do provide funding opportunities, we do provide coaching… we do provide back-end services like an incubator, we do provide project selection activity and we also run like a company,” he told reporters.
“We are all of the above.”
The company, Innovation Works, was funded by a group of investors including YouTube co-founder Steve Chen, Taiwan’s electronics maker Foxconn Technology Group and Legend Group, parent of computer giant Lenovo.
“Our commitment is to mentoring and supporting the next generation of Chinese entrepreneurs so that they can focus on building great products without distraction,” Lee said.
He added that the company planned to develop 50 companies over 10 years and train 500 people.
“Certainly my hope is there will be a company in this 50 that becomes a world-class company and world-class brand,” he said.
Meanwhile, Chinese scholars have criticized Google for bowing to Chinese censorship demands, although a study by the Open Net Initiative revealed that the American company censors around a third fewer terms than Baidu.
Baidu commands around 63 percent of the Chinese internet search market, while Google caters to only 33 percent, according to iResearch, a Chinese research firm.