Shhhh: GOOGLE Censorship [Archive] - Professional Soldiers ®

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Warrior-Mentor

01-05-2010, 18:45

Google's motto is "Don't be Evil."

Yeah. Well...nothing in there about being fair, right or not censoring...

http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2010/01/censorship-google-blocking-negative-searches-related-to-islam.html

Try it for yourself.

Then, set your search engine for www.bing.com

Their first prompt when you put in "islam" is "islamic sharia law" Interesting....

SF0

01-05-2010, 19:33

Unfortunately, Google is well known for censorship at the request of different countries. It's all about the money to them, not what is right.

http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2007-03-02-n19.html

Sigaba

01-05-2010, 20:13

FWIW, Google searches for:

"Islam is dangerous" produced 14.5 million hits in 0.21 seconds
"Islam is evil" produced 15.3 million hits in 0.39 seconds
"Islamic law is oppressive" produced 1.32 million hits in 0.41 seconds
"Islam promotes violence" produced 7.5 million hits in 0.36 seconds

In each case, many of the results on the first page hardly can be considered to offered favorable views of Islam or of Muslims.

In regards to the primary allegation of the blog entry, is the absence of search suggestions an act of censorship or is it a reflection of Google sending back suggestions based upon other searches?

And even if the undocumented allegations in the blog entry are accurate, so what? Google is a business. If one doesn't like the way a business is run or the products it offers, one is free to find alternatives.

Or one can do what Ms. Geller did: post a blog entry about being a victim of a corporation's cowardly refusal to participate in her campaign of self promotion. Amazingly, one gets zero suggestions for "Pamela Geller is".

Source is here (http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2006/oct/19/guardianweeklytechnologysection/print).

Newly asked questions
What content does Google censor outside China?

Outside China, Google blocks only websites with child abuse images and certain values from its search of ranges of numbers.

The latter restriction, according to Google's worldwide policy counsel Andrew McLaughlin, tackles identity thieves using the search engine to trawl the web for credit card and government identification numbers, such as US social security numbers. It is still possible to search for individual numbers within these ranges, so owners can check these are not online.

"Beyond that, we don't do affirmative policing," McLaughlin told an Oxford University seminar earlier this month. "That's for legal, and just value, reasons."

However, localised Google services abide by the law of the relevant country. McLaughlin described a legally-enforced, secret blacklist run by Germany's BPjM, the country's Federal Department for Media Harmful to Young Persons, as "troublingly free of the kind of checks and balances you would expect". Google.de complies, albeit with an announcement when links have been blocked.

But although Google redirects users in Germany to Google.de through "geotargeting" (identifying your location from your internet address), it does not stop them switching to the uncensored Google.com; the link is on the front page (www.google.com/ncr).

Jonathan Zittrain, professor of internet governance and regulation at the Oxford Internet Institute, described this as a "gossamer-thin fig leaf" of compliance with national regulation. "The more optimistic way to characterise what's going on is that governments recognise there are limits to their jurisdiction," McLaughlin replied, adding that geotargeting is easy to get around through anonymous web-use services.

Of China, where users cannot avoid the nationally censored version, McLaughlin said the company had decided some Google was better than none for the Chinese. "We think we're making an empirically justifiable calculation," he said. "It is a contestable argument."

He said that Google.com and Blogger are "the most free-speech parts of our offering", but that Google Earth had not used new images of Beirut showing bomb damage from Israel's conflict with Hizbullah last summer. McLaughlin said that doing so could have convinced governments, some of which control aerial imagery of their country, to insist on pre-publication checks, although the US and UK have taken a relaxed attitude.

"So far, we haven't degraded or blurred an image at the requirement of any government," McLaughlin said of Google Earth, adding: "I don't know how much longer that will be true."

dadof18x'er

01-05-2010, 20:58

Paslode

01-05-2010, 21:12

Google, Bing, Yahoo all come with the same results.

*EDIT*

No they don't.....quite interesting to say the least.

dac

01-05-2010, 21:30

Sigaba

01-06-2010, 01:27

The feature she was highlighting is called "Google Suggest". This is the dropdown box with suggestions of the most popular search strings that start with your typing and completely separate from the search algorithm.
Yes. I am aware that she's talking about Google Suggest. Hence, my reference to "the primary allegation of the blog entry." My broader focus is her accusation that Google is motivated by cowardice and engaged in acts of censorship.

I offered my search results to show that if she could just summon the energy to type a few more words and did some reading, she could find for what she was looking.

Then again, were she to type a few more words and do some reading, she'd be doing actual research and then she'd be deviating from her primary objective as a blogger.

What might she have found had she done some research? Maybe the article quoted above. Maybe she'd have found the following from Google's support page, available here (http://www.google.com/support/websearch/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=106230).We try to filter out suggestions that include pornographic terms, dirty words, and hate and violence terms. If you encounter a term that should not be suggested, please let us know by posting in the Google Web Search Help Forum. (http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Web+Search) The above link would have taken her here (http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Web+Search/label?lid=2c23fab44efbf480&hl=en). Use of the search function might have produced the results available here (http://www.google.com/support/websearch/bin/search.py?hl=en&forum=1&query=censor+more%3Aforum). And what a surprise! The results display a lot of end users doing what end users do--bitching endlessly about (i) software not working the way we think it should and making accusations of (ii) censorship, (iii)conspiracy, and/or (iii) incompetence.

Me? I'm guilty as charged for (i) and (iii). There's no other way to explain the fact that Google Suggest does not produce "Carla Gugino loves Sigaba" or "Robert B. Parker wishes he wrote as well as Sigaba.":pGoogle has some pretty smart people working there, I find it a little hard to believe that the phrase "Islam is" would have ZERO matching popular searches while every other religion would have a full list. Well written software would not work that way on accident.

I'm not putting on the tinfoil hat just yet, but it is ready in case I need it.Based upon my experiences working in the software industry with some frighteningly intelligent people who made a really wide array of products, I can say that at times the accident was well written software.

And from my experiences, I can tell you that when push comes to shove, software engineers, developers, and coders are going to accede to the wishes of the business development team who are going to listen to the requests/complaints/desires of their clients, customers, and other important stakeholders.

This is to say that, contrary to rumor, the digital age is a lot like the machine age. Then, like now, the most important language is money.

lisam

01-06-2010, 14:11

She's right on the auto-suggest thing. But Pamela Geller is...interesting. I'm pretty Republican..but she seems to me...beyond neoconservatism, at least about some issues.

Warrior-Mentor

01-06-2010, 14:21

She's right on the auto-suggest thing. But Pamela Geller is...interesting. I'm pretty Republican..but she seems to me...beyond neoconservatism, at least about some issues.

Intense could be one word you are looking for.

dac

01-06-2010, 18:44

(iii)conspiracy, and/or (iii) incompetence.

Me? I'm guilty as charged for (i) and (iii).

Which iii are you guilty of? :p

I am well aware of all of your points about the industry, and I could not agree more. I can say for sure MY software never works perfectly. :D

I have, however, seen Google remove "War Porn" videos on youtube within days for being hateful, but leave the jihad recruitment videos up indefinitely. That is handled some admin following company policy, not an automated algorithm.

Can't... resist... tinfoil........

Ryanr

01-07-2010, 14:08

If Google is intentionally filtering suggestions that would offend Muslims they're doing a miserably bad job. Try "Is Islam" ("violent" / "evil"), "Muhammad is" ("a false prophet" / "satan" / "the antichrist") or "Islam should", "Islam will", etc...

If they did intentionally remove that result I bet it's due to a particularly nasty suggestion that made it into the list somehow -- which is totally possible if you all remember how Bush critics managed to link "miserable failure" to the official Whitehouse biography of President Bush. There could plausibly be a new sort of "Google bomb (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_bomb)" that gets things into that suggestion box. Heck, for that matter, this could be an action by Google to rectify a semi-malicious tamper by pro-Islam folks -- it's totally possible that somehow something like "Islam is the only true religion" got pinned to all 10 suggestion slots (that'd be the "bug") and they just disabled it while they're fixing it.

All totally conjecture, I know, but my point is that there are a number of reasons ranging from censorship to error to something in the middle.

edit: "Quran is / The Quran is" has pretty colorful results too.

BigJimCalhoun

01-07-2010, 22:08

Google only recently started celebrating Memorial Day on their page. The did all sorts of stupid things like Picasso's birthday, but avoided Memorial day each year.

Sigaba

01-07-2010, 22:24

Google only recently started celebrating Memorial Day on their page. The did all sorts of stupid things like Picasso's birthday, but avoided Memorial day each year.BJC--

Your observation raises interesting questions.
Is a company's primary responsibility to its owners or to the country where it has its corporate offices?
What serves the United States better? A company that follows a business development plan determined by its management team and thus demonstrates the superiority of American democratic capitalism or one that makes decisions based upon the desires of some of its end users?
Does Google's charitable foundation, located here (http://www.google.org/), balance out criticism such as yours?

Richard

01-08-2010, 08:04

Google only recently started celebrating Memorial Day on their page. The did all sorts of stupid things like Picasso's birthday, but avoided Memorial day each year.

I've seen Christain schools remain open on Memorial Day to make up 'snow days' and still be able to end the school year as planned - and I know of few commercial businesses who are closed around here on Memorial Day because it's an important day for all those BIG Memorial Day Sales. Seems like nothing says we appreciate and honor the sacrifices of our veterans like a good old-fashioned American commercial sales event with flags flying everywhere. :rolleyes:

And so it goes...

Richard's jaded $.02 :munchin

LibraryLady

01-08-2010, 12:43

Google, Bing, Yahoo all come with the same results.

*EDIT*

No they don't.....quite interesting to say the least.

Considering their algorithms are proprietary, it's no wonder they have different results.

Don't be a slave to one search engine - there are a ton of them out there, each with a different bent. None is perfect.

LL

Richard

01-08-2010, 12:56

Don't be a slave to one search engine - there are a ton of them out there, each with a different bent. None is perfect.

This is one I frequently find of use:

http://www.37.com/

Richard

BigJimCalhoun

01-08-2010, 21:03

BJC--

Your observation raises interesting questions.
Is a company's primary responsibility to its owners or to the country where it has its corporate offices?
What serves the United States better? A company that follows a business development plan determined by its management team and thus demonstrates the superiority of American democratic capitalism or one that makes decisions based upon the desires of some of its end users?
Does Google's charitable foundation, located here (http://www.google.org/), balance out criticism such as yours?

For the above, former, former, and different topic altogether.

I have a hard time with people who fly around in their private jets telling me that I am polluting too much.

Google could have easily changed their web page for US IP addresses to show some respect for Memorial Day and Veteran's Day. My perception, and the perceptions of others, is that it was anti-George Bush slam at the expense of those who have given all for them to have the chance to have a company like that. If you make a point of changing your front page as part of a statement and ignore US patriotic holidays, what statement are you making?

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/why-doesnt-google-honor-memorial-day-in-the-us/6967/
http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=55900
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=20808_Google_and_Memorial_Day&only
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/newmedia/la-fi-google9oct09,0,4300565,print.story

They did finally change it...
http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/020074.html

I very well may be incorrect, but my perception is that Google respects the US Military less than the average US company does. If you are in the military while working at Microsoft and get called up on duty, MS will pay the difference between your military salary and their salary. This happened to one guy 5 times. (I used to work for Microsoft, but no longer do).

My goal, as a guest to this site, is to be a good and respectful guest, so I will cease my end of the discussion. :)

Razor

01-08-2010, 23:58

Jim-Jim-poor misguided Jim, don't you understand these many instances of perceived slights are merely harmless, repetitive coincidence, much like the dozens upon dozens of terrorist incidents over the last 40 some odd years that have been carried out by members of a specific faith? Please refrain from drawing unfounded, biased conclusions from them.

How's that go again? "Fool me once, shame on you..."

Richard

01-09-2010, 07:52

I'm struggling with the logic of some of the arguments presented here and the implication that because a company - for unknown reason(s) - chose to not blatantly market a patriotic holiday like so many other businesses do - their perceived slight means they are {insert outrage of choice}.

The LA Times article is enlightening - especially the final paragraph.

We have a bastard Patriotism, a sarcasm, a burlesque; but we have no such thing as a public conscience. Politically we are just a joke.
- Mark Twain

Richard's $.02 :munchin

LibraryLady

01-09-2010, 10:53

This is one I frequently find of use:

http://www.37.com/

Richard

If you like using metasearch engines, try http://www.dogpile.com/- bonus - they are very patriotic and have great graphics on holidays.

LL

Razor

01-11-2010, 09:28

I'm struggling with the logic of some of the arguments presented here...

I'm no intelligence analyst, but I do recall a course or two where I learned that a pattern of specific behavior over a period of time often constituted a concious intent.

Sigaba

01-13-2010, 17:19

In addition to the topic raised in the OP, the article below also talks about China's ongoing disregard for intellectual property rights.

Source is here (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/13/world/asia/13beijing.html?em=&pagewanted=print).January 13, 2010
Google, Citing Attack, Threatens to Exit China
By ANDREW JACOBS and MIGUEL HELFT

This article was reported by Andrew Jacobs, Miguel Helft and John Markoff and written by Mr. Jacobs.

BEIJING — Google said Tuesday that it would stop cooperating with Chinese Internet censorship and consider shutting down its operations in the country altogether, citing assaults from hackers on its computer systems and China’s attempts to “limit free speech on the Web.”

The move, if followed through, would be a highly unusual rebuke of China by one of the largest and most admired technology companies, which had for years coveted China’s 300 million Web users.

Since arriving here in 2006 under an arrangement with the government that purged its Chinese search results of banned topics, Google has come under fire for abetting a system that increasingly restricts what citizens can read online.

Google linked its decision to sophisticated cyberattacks on its computer systems that it suspected originated in China and that were aimed, at least in part, at the Gmail user accounts of Chinese human rights activists.

Those attacks, which Google said took place last week, were directed at some 34 companies or entities, most of them in Silicon Valley, California, according to people with knowledge of Google’s investigation into the matter. The attackers may have succeeded in penetrating elaborate computer security systems and obtaining crucial corporate data and software source codes, though Google said it did not itself suffer losses of that kind.

While the scope of the hacking and the motivations and identities of the hackers remained uncertain, Google’s response amounted to an unambiguous repudiation of its own five-year courtship of the vast China market, which most major multinational companies consider crucial to their growth prospects. It is also likely to enrage the Chinese authorities, who deny that they censor the Internet and are accustomed to having major foreign companies adapt their practices to Chinese norms.

The company said it would try to negotiate a new arrangement to provide uncensored results on its search site, google.cn. But that is a highly unlikely prospect in a country that has the most sweeping Web filtering system in the world. Google said it would otherwise cease to run google.cn and would consider shutting its offices in China, where it employs some 700 people, many of them highly compensated software engineers, and has an estimated $300 million in annual revenue.

Google executives declined to discuss in detail their reasons for overturning their China strategy. But despite a costly investment, the company has a much smaller share of the search market here than it does in other major markets, commanding only about one in three searches by Chinese. The leader in searches, Baidu, is a Chinese-run company that enjoys a close relationship with the government.

Google executives have privately fretted for years that the company’s decision to censor the search results on google.cn, to filter out topics banned by Chinese censors, was out of sync with the company’s official motto, “Don’t be evil.”

“We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all,” David Drummond, senior vice president for corporate development and the chief legal officer, said in a statement.

Wenqi Gao, a spokesman for the Chinese Consulate in New York, said he did not see any problems with google.cn. “I want to reaffirm that China is committed to protecting the legitimate rights and interests of foreign companies in our country,” he said in a phone interview.

In China, search requests that include words like “Tiananmen Square massacre” or “Dalai Lama” come up blank. In recent months, the government has also blocked YouTube, Google’s video-sharing service.

While Google’s business in China is now small, analysts say that the country could soon become one of the most lucrative Internet and mobile markets, and a withdrawal would significantly reduce Google’s long-term growth.

“The consequences of not playing the China market could be very big for any company, but particularly for an Internet company that makes its money from advertising,” said David B. Yoffie, a Harvard Business School professor. Mr. Yoffie said advertising played an even bigger role in the Internet in China than it did in the United States. At the time of its arrival, the company said that it believed that the benefits of its presence in China outweighed the downside of being forced to censor some search results here, as it would provide more information and openness to Chinese citizens. The company, however, has repeatedly said that it would monitor restrictions in China.

Google’s announcement Tuesday drew praise from free speech and human rights advocates, many of whom had criticized the company in the past over its decision to enter the Chinese market despite censorship requirements.

“I think it’s both the right move and a brilliant one,” said Jonathan Zittrain, a legal scholar at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society.

Rebecca MacKinnon, a fellow at the Open Space Institute and an expert on the Chinese Internet, said that Google had endured repeated harassment in recent months and that by having operations in China it potentially risked the security of its users in China. She said many Chinese dissidents used Gmail because its servers are hosted overseas and that it offered extra encryption.

“Unless they turn themselves into a Chinese company, Google could not win,” she said. “The company has clearly put its foot down and said enough is enough.”

In the past year, Google has been increasingly constricted by the Chinese government. In June, after briefly blocking access nationwide to its main search engine and other services like Gmail, the government forced the company to disable a function that lets the search engine suggest terms. At the time, the government said it was simply seeking to remove pornographic material from the company’s search engine results.

Some company executives suggested then that the campaign was a concerted effort to stain Google’s image. Since its entry into China, the company has steadily lost market share to Baidu.

Google called the attacks highly sophisticated. In the past, such electronic intrusions have either exploited the practice of “phishing,” to persuade unsuspecting users to allow their computers to be compromised, or exploited vulnerabilities in software programs permitting the attacks to gain control of systems remotely. Once they have taken over a target computer, it is possible to search for specific documents.

People familiar with the investigation into the attacks said they were aimed at source code repositories at high-tech companies. Source code is the original programmer’s instructions used to develop software programs and can provide both economic advantages as well as insight into potential security vulnerabilities.

In its public statement Google pointed to a United States government report prepared by the United States-China Economic and Security Review Commission in October and an investigation by Canadian researchers that revealed a vast electronic spying operation last March.

The Canadian researchers discovered that digital documents had been stolen via the Internet from hundreds of government and private organizations around the world from computer systems based in China.

Andrew Jacobs reported from Beijing, and Miguel Helft and John Markoff from San Francisco. David Barboza contributed reporting from Shanghai, and Jonathan Ansfield from Beijing.

Paslode

01-25-2010, 17:22

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/01/25/islam-broken-according-google/

Jeremy A. Kaplan

- FOXNews.com

- January 25, 2010
Exclusive: Islam Is ... Finally Being Fixed on Google

A glitch in the "don't be evil" company's search engine appeared to censor searches for information about Islam. And after nearly three weeks, the company is finally fixing the problem.

After nearly three weeks, Google is finally repairing a glitch that hid search suggestions for the phrase "Islam is," which had led some to conclude that Google -- whose mantra is "don't be evil" -- had been censoring its search results.

A Google spokesman tells FoxNews.com that "the bug fix is in the process of rolling out, and suggestions will be visible within the next few days." Twitter comments from readers across the country confirm Google's statement; reports from Florida, Ohio, New Jersey, Georgia and more concur that the fix is rolling out across the country.

When FoxNews.com had asked Google for an explanation on Jan. 8, a company spokesman explained that the weird absence of results was just a software problem: "This is in fact a bug and we're working to fix it as quickly as we can." But the company would not respond to requests for clarification, nor would it offer a timeline for repairing the problem.

And until this morning, nearly three weeks had elapsed without a patch for the glitch, which clearly turned out to be more complex than initially assumed. When asked this morning for an estimated repair date for the bug, a Google spokesman would say only that the company was working on a fix, adding that "this is not an editorial thing."

Meanwhile, the other major search engines continued to return a wealth of results about what Islam may be. Bing and MSN both suggest that "Islam is the light," while Yahoo proposes that "Islam is the way of life." And Ask.com coyly points out that "Islam is the light, doll."

Our initial report on the "Islam is" bug generated a firestorm of controversy among FoxNews.com readers.

cncfan wrote, "I quit using Google last year, got fed up with their censor and promoting their left-leaning ideas." And Jerzyboy commented, "This is just one more 'flag' that Internet search engines have a lot of power to steer public opinion. Let's hope that Bing et-al offer a way to diversify results and get away from the bias of Google or anyone else."

mark.msjacobs and others sided with Google on the issue: "Since the results for Mohammed yield some pretty negative stuff, I'll give Google the benefit of the doubt on this one."

According to Google's Web site, the query suggestions that appear as you type are drawn from from searches you've done (if you're logged in), searches done by users all over the world, sites in the search index and ads in Google's network.

The company also explains that "We try to filter out suggestions that include pornographic terms, dirty words and hate and violence terms. If you encounter a term that should not be suggested, please let us know by posting in the Google Web Search Help Forum."

Many quirky items do make their way through the filters, however. Search for "can j" and the first suggestion asks, "Can Jesus microwave a burrito?" The bizarre metaphysical question is a reference to "The Simpsons" TV show, where Homer Simpson once asked, "Can Jesus microwave a burrito so hot even he could not eat it?"

An intriguing corollary: Google does offer search suggestions for future tense queries as well. Search for "Christianity will" and Google suggests "Christianity will end, it will disappear," and "Christianity will end." Input the same query about Islam and Google notes that "Islam will dominate the world" and "Islam will destroy Europe."

Richard

01-26-2010, 06:35

And while we hyper-focus elsewhere...

Richard

In Digital Combat, U.S. Finds No Easy Deterrent
John Markoff, David Sanger and Thom Shanker, NYT, 25 Jan 2010

On a Monday morning earlier this month, top Pentagon leaders gathered to simulate how they would respond to a sophisticated cyberattack aimed at paralyzing the nation’s power grids, its communications systems or its financial networks.

The results were dispiriting. The enemy had all the advantages: stealth, anonymity and unpredictability. No one could pinpoint the country from which the attack came, so there was no effective way to deter further damage by threatening retaliation. What’s more, the military commanders noted that they even lacked the legal authority to respond — especially because it was never clear if the attack was an act of vandalism, an attempt at commercial theft or a state-sponsored effort to cripple the United States, perhaps as a prelude to a conventional war.

What some participants in the simulation knew — and others did not — was that a version of their nightmare had just played out in real life, not at the Pentagon where they were meeting, but in the far less formal war rooms at Google Inc. Computers at Google and more than 30 other companies had been penetrated, and Google’s software engineers quickly tracked the source of the attack to seven servers in Taiwan, with footprints back to the Chinese mainland.

After that, the trail disappeared into a cloud of angry Chinese government denials, and then an ugly exchange of accusations between Washington and Beijing. That continued Monday, with Chinese assertions that critics were trying to “denigrate China” and that the United States was pursuing “hegemonic domination” in cyberspace.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/26/world/26cyber.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

The Reaper

01-26-2010, 18:11

Maybe we should assess and select the best hackers in the US and give them funding and access to non-attribitionally "play" with the Chinese systems.

You play with the bull, you get the horns.

Naah, no balls for that. Let's just hope it never happens.:rolleyes:

TR

Richard

01-26-2010, 18:31

I wonder if the Chinese watched Die Hard IV, too. ;)

Richard's $.02 :munchin

Marina

03-14-2010, 18:41

In addition to the topic raised in the OP, the article below also talks about China's ongoing disregard for intellectual property rights.

It looks like Google is OK with political self-censorship of its content for you and me, but it's not OK with the Chinese telling them what to censor.

Google to shut China search engine (http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/dd69e680-2e06-11df-b85c-00144feabdc0.html)

Google has drawn up detailed plans for the closure of its Chinese search engine and is now “99.9 per cent” certain to go ahead as talks over censorship with the Chinese authorities have reached an apparent impasse, according to a person familiar with the company’s thinking.

In a hardening of positions on both sides, the Chinese government also on Friday threw down a direct public challenge to the US search company, with a warning that it was not prepared to compromise on internet censorship to stop Google leaving.

The signs that Google was on the brink of closing Google.cn, its local search service in China, came two months after it promised to stop bowing to censorship there. But while a decision could be made very soon, the company is likely to take some time to follow through with the plan as it seeks an orderly closure and takes steps to protect local employees from retaliation by the authorities, the person familiar with its position said.

Google is also seeking ways to keep its other operations in China going, although some executives fear that a backlash from the Chinese authorities could make it almost impossible to keep a presence in the country.

When the search giant first promised to end censorship in response to what it claimed were a series of cyber-attacks mounted from inside China, many China-watchers warned that its public defiance of Beijing would provoke a stern response.

On Friday, Li Yizhong, minister for industry and information technology, said: “If [Google] takes steps that violate Chinese laws, that would be unfriendly, that would be irresponsible, and they would have to bear the consequences.”

One person close to the search company, meanwhile, said that its senior executives remained “adamant” about ending the censorship. The company has also ruled out keeping the search service going by handing majority control, or even the entire business, to a local player, this person said.

Google’s executives have made it clear that they still hope to stay in the country, whatever the fate of Google.cn. “It’s very important to know we are not pulling out of China,” Eric Schmidt, Google’s chief executive, told the Financial Times at the time. “We have a good business in China. This is about the censorship rules, not anything else.”

The company’s other operations, which pre-date the launch of Google.cn four years ago, include its research centre in Beijing and a sales force that sells advertising on the Chinese-language Google.com search service, based outside China, to advertisers inside the country.

Mr Li encouraged Google to continue its operations in the country. “[Google] has taken 30 per cent of the Chinese search market.

“If you don’t leave, China will welcome that, if you don’t leave, it will be beneficial for the development of the internet in China.”