Microsoft Denied Filtering Chinese Search Results

[Harry-Potter]

Microsoft denied Bing censorship in China and blamed technical problems. However, industry observers say that Microsoft’s claims are very doubtful. The company has blamed an error in the system for producing results on its Bing search engine censoring data for Chinese language users like it filtered results in mainland China.

 

 

By the way, this admission is an embarrassment for the tech giant, as Microsoft is making a major push to expand its business in China. Last week, campaigners at FreeWeibo, an instrument allowing uncensored search of Chinese blogs, found out that Bing returns different results in the United States for English and Chinese language searches. The difference was noticed on controversial terms, like “Dalai Lama”, “June 4 incident” or “Bo Xilai”.

Initially, the company refused to comment, but later Bing issued a statement, where they denied censorship and informed they started an investigation into the discrepancies. Bing explained that the company does not apply China’s legal requirements to searches which are conducted outside of the country. Microsoft claimed that due to an error in their system, they triggered an incorrect results removal notification for a number of searches mentioned in the report. In the meantime, the results themselves are and were unaltered outside of China, the company claimed.

FreeWeibo’s homepage also didn’t come up in search results for Chinese language users. Bing said the website had been cut because it was marked as inappropriate due to low quality or adult content at a certain moment in the past. The company promised the website had already been restored.

However, FreeWeibo claimed that the company’s explanations were simply not true, and it was clearly seen that the results are and were altered outside of China. They pointed out that anyone is able to run independent tests themselves in order to verify their claims and make sure that Microsoft is just trying to cover up their complicit involvement in attempts of China to cleanse the Internet of any negative information about the country’s government.