Search Engines. Assignment 4.

Assignment:

Internet censorship is a major issue. We're going to explore it a bit in the context of search engines.


Enter the following search terms into:
google.com,
bing.com,
baidu.com (major Chinese search engine) and
google.cn (google's Chinese website).

In your blog, comment on any differences in search results you see. I don't expect you to be able to read Chinese, but the actual URLs will be in english and often will have english summaries.



1. uss yorktown nt



Bing.com, Google.cn, and Google.com had all much the same search results. However, the only thing the same in Baidu.com was the first result. Everything else was completely different.







2. google china censorship

The results returned from each engine were a lot alike in that they provide much the same information about the topic. However, I have noticed that Baidu's results are mainly Chinese sites without much international influence.

3. Tiananmen Square



Wow. There were some huge differences here. Bing and Google.com resulted in, again, much the same results. However, Google.cn and Baidu's whole first page of results were all Chinese sites! Chinese censorship has completely resulted in a biased return of information.

4. Taiwan independence

This result again resulted in biased feedback from both Google.cn and Baidu. I find it interesting that any time a search is entered on a Chinese engine that pertains to any type of negative viewpoints about the Republic of China, censorship kicks in.