Google Makes Wall Great Again

Google blocks China adverts for sites that help bypass censorship 
Visitors and locals rely on virtual private networks to access global internet 
By Yuan Yang in Hong Kong

Google has stopped distributing advertisements in China for two websites that review anti-censorship software, in a move that signals the US tech giant’s efforts to curry favour with Beijing.
Last week, VPNMentor, a company that reviews virtual private network services that allow users to bypass China’s internet controls and avoid surveillance, said that Google had refused to sell its adverts to Chinese users, after doing so for more than two years. 
 On Wednesday, Top10VPN, another review site, said it had received the same notice after advertising with Google for several months.
 VPNMentor posted a screenshot of an email to Twitter, appearing to be from Google, saying “it is currently Google policy to disallowed [sic] promoting VPN services in China, due to the local legal restrictions”.
 Foreign businesses and visitors to China, as well as local citizens, rely on VPNs to access the global internet, including platforms such as Google and Facebook, which are blocked by China’s “Great Firewall” of internet controls.
Google runs adverts on third-party websites in China.
 Google said it had “longstanding policies prohibiting ads in our network for private servers, in countries where such servers are illegal”, adding that bans on VPN adverts in China had been in place for several years.
 On Friday, China’s market regulator demanded that internet platforms step up their censorship of adverts.
 However, there is no blanket ban on selling VPNs in China.
Chinese regulators issued a notice in 2017 stating that VPN providers would need to be licensed in order to operate in China.
Regulators told the Financial Times last year that the situation was “complex” and that they were still “researching” how to apply the measures.
 Charlie Smith of GreatFire, a censorship monitoring organisation, criticised Google’s blunt action in relation to VPNMentor and Top10VPN as being too broad.
He said: “There are legally registered VPNs operating in China, so either Google has not kept up to date with local regulations or they are overstepping their boundaries.” 
 David Kaye, the UN special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, said that Google’s move “deprived [Chinese users] of the choice to find uncensored material”. 
 “If Google is in the business of expanding access to information, why do they not conceive of their business in those terms in China?” he asked.
 Mr Kaye also questioned whether Google had researched the legal status of the review sites, or “sought ways to ameliorate the impact on expression” before deciding to enforce a ban against them as regards all VPN-related adverts.
 Mark Natkin of Marbridge Consulting, a tech research group in Beijing, said that Google “may be trying to comply with the spirit of the regulation”.
 “Google’s situation is that, based on their past decisions in China, they have a more delicate relationship with the Chinese authorities and feel compelled to make additional efforts to curry favour and get back in the good graces to get approval to re-enter the market,” he added.
Lee Jyh-An, associate professor of law at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, agreed, saying the move was a “signal to show kindness towards the Chinese government”. 
 “Google have withdrawn from China before and that scene wasn’t pleasant, so if they want to come back again, they have to show a stronger ‘kindness’ signal.”
 Google closed its China search engine in 2010 after suffering cyber attacks and periodic blocks from the government.
The company announced that it was no longer willing to censor search results, devastating its relationship with Beijing at the time.
 Google said its decision to block VPNMentor’s adverts was “completely unrelated” to trying to re-enter China.
 “As we’ve said for many months, we have no plans to launch Search in China and there is no work being undertaken on such a project,” the company added, referring to its previously leaked “Dragonfly” plan to bring a censored Google Search back to China.

Tech Quisling: Google working on censored search engine for China

Human rights groups criticise internet company for designing software that would leave out blacklisted content
By Alex Hern 

Google has been condemned for supporting state censorship following reports that the company is working on a mobile search app that would block certain search terms and allow it to reenter the Chinese market.
The California-based internet company has engineers designing search software that would leave out content blacklisted by the Chinese government, according to a New York Times report citing two unnamed people familiar with the effort. 

Such blacklisting would allow the company to reverse its move out of the country eight years ago, taken due to censorship and hacking.
News website The Intercept first reported the story, saying the Chinese search app was being tailored for the Google-backed Android operating system for mobile devices.
The service was said to have been shown to Chinese officials. 

Google did not respond to a request for comment. 

As well as the search app, Google is also building a second app, focused on news aggregation, for the Chinese market, which would also comply with the country’s censorship laws, according to tech news site the Information. 

The news app would take its lead from popular algorithmically-curated apps such as Bytedance’s Toutiao – released for the Western market as “TopBuzz” – that eschew human editors in favour of personalised, highly viral content.
There was no guarantee the project, code-named “Dragonfly” would result in Google search returning to China. 

Google already offers a number of apps to Chinese users, including Google Translate and Files Go, and the company has offices in Beijing, Shenzhen and Shanghai. 

But the largest of its services – search, email, and the Play app store – are all unavailable in the country.
Google’s co-founder Sergey Brin has previously cited his birth in the Soviet Union in the 1970s as explaining his opposition to enabling Chinese censorship. 

“It touches me more than other people having been born in a country that was totalitarian and having seen that for the first few years of my life,” he told the Guardian in 2010, as Google pulled its censorship from Chinese search after four years of co-operating with the authorities.
The Chinese human rights community said Google acquiescing to China’s censorship would be a “dark day for internet freedom”.
“It is impossible to see how such a move is compatible with Google’s ‘Do the right thing’ motto, and we are calling on the company to change course,” said Patrick Poon, China Researcher at Amnesty International.
“For the world’s biggest search engine to adopt such extreme measures would be a gross attack on freedom of information and internet freedom. In putting profits before human rights, Google would be setting a chilling precedent and handing the Chinese government a victory.”
GreatFire, a China-based organisation that monitors internet censorship and provides ways around the “Great Firewall” for Chinese residents, said the move “could be the final nail in the Chinese internet freedom coffin.”
“The ensuing crackdown on freedom of speech will be felt around the globe,” the organisation added.
Speaking to the Guardian in 2016, GreatFire’s co-founder “Charlie Smith” – a pseudonym – had praised Google’s initial decision to pull out of China in 2010, over what it said were cyberattacks aimed at its source code and the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists.
“I think people are going to be very wary and attentive to how Google goes back into China. And hopefully they’re going to show us that there is a way to go back in without having to censor,” Smith said at the time.
“I would be disappointed, and I know that a lot of other people would be disappointed, if Google went back in and said ‘we’re going to censor our search results again’, because they’ve made that mistake already, and they should understand that the situation hasn’t changed.”