Chinese Google no longer shows porn

In June of this year, Google was sharply criticized by Chinese state media and government oversight commissions for the fact that the search engine Google.cn omits links to pornographic sites in the search results. For some time, access to Google.com and other Google websites was blocked everywhere in China, and the government demanded that the company suspend the display of search results on foreign sites until the content sorting function was turned on. The scandal began to subside in July, after a meeting of government censorship committees with Google’s management, which resulted in some of Google’s blocked services being thawed.

Google modified the search algorithm and added the function of filtering porn content, after which many government agencies unblocked the Google search engine and expressed appreciation to the company for its “serious attitude” to the fight against pornography.

Google.cn has a long-standing practice of “culling” search results for inappropriate content. A message is displayed on the results page stating that some search results cannot be viewed. These include, for example, the results for Tiananmen (the name of the square in Beijing, where in 1989, when trying to disperse a student demonstration in support of the democratic system, hundreds of people were killed), as well as search results, where the keywords are the names of major politicians. The search engine does not show results for Xu Zhiyong - the name of a human rights defender who was recently arrested for one month. A message appears on the screen stating that not shown "search results may contain information that is contrary to law, other legal acts or a political course."

Google itself believes that, as an international service, "must strictly follow local laws and regulations." Baidu, a leading Chinese search engine and Google’s main rival, also filters search results.

via pcworld.com