Googlenews...Dailykos...and China--in their words

[ccarter84]

I e-mailed Googlenews a little bit ago, and this was the response that showed up today.


""Hi *CC*,

Thanks for writing to us about Google News. We launched Google News China September 9th for users who would like to search and browse news in simplified Chinese. Making news available to millions of people in their preferred language is very much in accord with our mission of organizing the world's information and making it universally accessible and useful.

In creating new services, we consider many factors, but our primary goal is to deliver a positive experience that leaves the user better informed.
To do this with our Google News services, we sometimes elect not to include certain sources that display improperly or are inaccessible to users. We do our best to make these kinds of decisions on a neutral, non-political basis. And that is how we approached Google News China.

In order to create the best possible search experience for our mainland China users, we do not include sites whose content is not accessible. To do so would only result in broken links that returned error messages when clicked. These sources represent a tiny fraction of the sources available in simplified Chinese. The thousands of sites that are included in Google News China provide a major new source of information for Chinese speakers, and we believe that Google News China offers a significant improvement over what was previously available.

If you'd like to learn more about this topic, please read our post on 'China, Google News and source inclusion' on the Google blog at http://www.google.com/googleblog/2004/09/china-google-news-and-source-inclusion.html

We appreciate your taking the time to share your views regarding rushlimbaugh.com with us and will keep it in mind as we work to improve Google News.

Regards,
The Google Team


Original Message Follows:
------------------------
From: *CC*
Subject: Regarding DailyKos & Censorship
Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 12:59:43 -0500

I know that you think dailykos isn't a credible news source, but then why is rushlimbaugh.com included as one in your search results? Is there a way you guys could label such peripheral sources of information so that people are aware of it not being as balanced or credible, yet still include it?



I'm sorry I'm just reminded of the stories that you have censored your googlenews at china's requests, and I cannot but help think that you might have mistaken that practice with your practices in the United States.



Thank you,

-CC ""
Guess they're a bit 'touchy' about their china issues

[miss_kitty]

1. I've seen them use other neoconny shit too

I'll bet it's one asshat in the office-it seems it's not always the case. At least they answered. I have written the BBC on many occasions, and the one time they didn't reply had to do with the extremely biased coverage in Haiti, during the US-backed overthrow of the democratically-elected gov't. It was a guy who was there, reading text that sounded as if it were prepared by the US Gov't.