Internet search giant Google will block politically sensitive terms on its new China site, bowing to conditions set by Beijing in return for access to the world's number-two Internet market.
The voluntary concessions laid out by Google, which is launching a China-based search site as it officially enters the market, would parallel similar self-censorship already practiced there by most multinationals and domestic players. Homegrown giants like Sohu.com and Baidu.com, along with China sites operated by Yahoo and Microsoft, all routinely block searches on politically sensitive terms such as the Falun Gong spiritual movement and Taiwan independence.
'In order to operate from China, we have removed some content from the search results available on Google.cn in response to local law, regulation or policy,' Andrew McLaughlin, Google's senior policy counsel, said.
Google is developing its China approach as it seeks to strike a balance between the freedom of information it champions and the censorship demanded by Beijing, which controls access to China's 111 million Internet users.
The company added that at least for now, it will stay away from e-mail and blogging in China, which have been the source of recent controversies after Beijing demanded information on an e-mail user from Yahoo, and Microsoft pulled down a politically sensitive posting from its China-based blog service.
Google said it will also stay away from chat rooms, another popular form of expression over the Internet. Instead, it said it would initially offer four of its core services - Web site and image search, Google News and local search - while working toward introducing additional services over time.
Google has long offered a full-featured Chinese language version of its Google.com service available to users worldwide and run from computers in its California headquarters.
But the company is preparing to run the service from China under a site with the local suffix '.cn', after getting a business license to operate in the market last year, hiring two key executives to head its China operation and signing up an initial round of partners to market some of its ad services.
Google officials said they planned to notify users of its Google.cn service when the company has restricted access to certain search terms or the Web sites behind them. In different political circumstances, Google also notifies users of its German, French and US services when it blocks access to material such as banned Nazi sites in Europe.
