For many years, many tech companies and web services were not allowed in China or have voluntarily withdrawn themselves from the country, such is the case with Google who has been absent in the country for the past decade. However recently there have been talks that Google is planning on making a return, and apparently this has been in the works for years.
In a report from The Intercept, it seems that Google has been steadily refining its search engine over the years to ensure that it complies with China’s regulations, namely preventing certain words, phrases, or topics from being discovered that have been officially censored by the local government.
This is done through a website called 265.com which was obtained by Google back in 2008, and basically what Google is doing is feeding it various search terms and phrases and seeing if it gets rejected. This is because search queries entered into the website are actually redirected to Baidu, China’s answer to Google and also possibly Google’s chief rival if they were to return to the country.
Due to China announcing censorships from time to time, such as at one point banning the letter “N”, or banning the “Christopher Robin” movie, we imagine that Google’s censored search engine definitely needs to be careful about the contents it surfaces. It is understandable why Google would want back in to China, although there are some US lawmakers who aren’t too thrilled about that.