Who wants to have stories like this written? It just feels so … wrong.
A day after Google’s buggy censorship of sites for Chinese-users was revealed, the search giant has responded by fixing its filters so topics such as beer and jokes are no longer deleted.
An
investigation published Thursday by CNET News.com showed that Google’s new China search engine not only censored criticisms of the Chinese government, but went further than similar services from Microsoft and Yahoo by targeting sites related to teen pregnancy, alcohol, dating and homosexuality.
On Friday morning, however, those previously verboten sites became available through Google.cn. That brings Google’s filtering in line with blacklists used by Microsoft and Yahoo.
But it’s worse. For more, read Gary, and Philipp. In short, Google used to have a page in its help area that said this:
But now it says this:
.
Update: Google explains its policy of engagement here.
Update 2: Google’s new explanation of its censorship policy is up (SEW).