Chinese Censorship Triggers Changes For Google (NASDAQ: GOOG)

Google has added software to its search page that warns users when they search a term whose results are likely to be blocked by Chinese authorities.  The change is viewed as an improvement of the search experience for users based in mainland China.  The change was announced without fanfare on one of Google’s corporate blogs.

The announcement said that users were frustrated by error messages and disconnections and Google engineers had “taken a long, hard look at our systems and have not found any problems.”  It continues, “However, after digging into user reports, we’ve noticed that these interruptions are closely correlated with searches for a particular subset of terms.  So starting today we’ll notify users in mainland China when they enter a keyword that may cause connection issues.”

Alan Eustace, a senior vice president, said the company analyzed 350,000 popular search terms for words that were “disruptive queries” and programmed a yellow box to appear when one of those terms are entered stating that searching for the term “may temporarily break your connection to Google.”  The message concludes, “This interruption is outside Google’s control,” and users are given the option to enter a different search term.

Google’s market share in mainland China has plunged as users have wearied of blocked Web sites and timeouts that can last for more than a minute.  Users in mainland China can be disconnected from Google without explanation when they open a Web page found using censored search terms.  When Google maintained its servers in mainland China prior to 2010, its search results were sanitized and a note was included at the bottom of search pages stating that some results had been blocked.

Users of Chinese search services can search without difficulty because government censors have already sanitized the results to delete any problematic Web pages.  The government blocks any search or page that includes an offending term.  Chinese censors cannot change or limit Google’s search results because they are produced by servers based outside of mainland China.

In January 2010, a clash over censorship prompted Google to move its servers to Hong Kong.  Since then, Chinese officials have employed an array of techniques to punish the company.  The company has experienced unexplained problems with its Gmail service and its Google Plus social networking service has been blocked, among other issues.  A spokesman declined to comment on the prospect of retaliation by the Chinese authorities for these latest changes to the search service.