Google pegs China search trouble to 'Great Firewall'

Wednesday, March 31, 2010

AFP
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China's notoriously sophisticated Internet censorship is referred to as "The Great Firewall". (Photo: AFP)

SAN FRANCISCO — Google said Tuesday that a deeper look at trouble with results at its Chinese-language search engine indicated the cause was "The Great Firewall of China" erected by censors there.

The US Internet giant had initially thought that recent changes to its search software had misled China censors into thinking queries were for Radio Free Asia.

Google backed off that conclusion after it realized that it had upgraded its search parameters about a week before results stopped showing up for many queries at its Chinese-language engine.

"So whatever happened today to block Google.com.hk must have been as a result of a change in the great firewall," a Google spokesman said in an email response to an AFP inquiry.

"However, interestingly our search traffic in China is now back to normal -- even though we have not made any changes at our end."

China's notoriously sophisticated Internet censorship is referred to as "The Great Firewall."

Google said it will continue to monitor what is going on, but for the time being "this issue seems to be resolved."

Google upgraded search code parameters worldwide to include a "gs_rfai" string of characters as part of a modification intended to improve query results, according to the company.

Engineers at the firm initially suspected problems with China search results were caused by censorship software in that country mistaking the "rfa" characters as referring to Radio Free Asia.

Google also said it has yet to pinpoint the cause for its mobile Internet service being partially blocked in China.

The US Internet giant reported on Monday that its mobile Internet service in China was partially blocked, but it was unknown whether the trouble was related to its stand-off with Beijing over censorship.

Google mobile includes search, map, news and other services for smartphones and other Internet-enabled handsets.

Sensitivity to problems with Google offerings in China have heightened since the company last week said it would no longer bow to government censors in Beijing by filtering its search results and effectively shut down its Chinese search engine, re-routing mainland users to its uncensored site in Hong Kong.