Imagine a life-size model of a car. It might look nice, but as for functionality . . . Similarly, Google China had a blog search site that didn’t do much of anything. The company has just dropped in an engine, though, and (censorship issues aside) users can have at it.
Google China Gets Blog Search Engine
Google Blogoscoped’s Philipp Lenssen appears to have been the first (and so far, only) person to notice the change; he also caught on to the ways in which the blog search is limited. “As other Google offerings in China, this one is self-censored (on some searches, like a search for ‘censorship’, the bottom of the page in italics disclaims that some search results are not shown in compliance with local laws, regulations and policies),” writes Lenssen.
He then continues, “Also, upon entering certain queries like human rights or tiananmen, the result doesn’t properly display at all, but shows a place-holder message instead. However, it seems like something is still being rolled out here, and I’m not sure if this place-holder page is only triggered by ‘sensitive’ queries.”
So, to continue our car metaphor, Google’s Chinese blog search appears to be equipped with some sort of sick, sputtering three-cylinder, but the power plant is at least running, and repairs may be underway.
For Google’s sake, let’s hope that’s the case; a Reuters report published earlier today lists its market share as being 35.3 percent behind Baidu’s.
