From the Readers

Beware of Google's tricks

(China Daily)
Updated: 2010-04-09 08:18

On March 30, people could not use either google.com or google.com.hk beyond the afternoon. The google.com and google.com.hk connections were restored after midnight and a news from the Australian and some other media outlets stated that Google said an unexplained glitch on its part caused China's Internet censorship mechanism to block nearly all China-based searches on its sites, highlighting the precariousness of the US company's position in China after it stopped obeying censorship rules a week ago.

A Google spokesperson explained that the problem "seems to have been triggered by a change on Google's part". Google has tried to generate such a situation to gauge what would be China's netizens' reaction if it is actually blocked. It may have tried to create panic and tried to evaluate how much netizens would miss the search engine's "absence" it if it really quit China.

K.M. Rehan Salahuddin,via e-mail

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(China Daily 04/09/2010 page9)