Category: Search Engines

Google’s Challenges in China

We all know that Google is one of the largest multinational companies and the most widely used search engine all over the world. Around 86% of people prefer to use the Google search engine for researches. It handles more than 5 billion searches each day. But there are still a few countries that don’t use Google services. Do you know the name of those countries? They are China, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, and Syria. China is the only country which has banned all the services including YouTube, Gmail, Google search engine, and almost all other products. China has very strict censorship policies, so no one can access Google in China.

Google in China

In the year 2000, Google started to provide search services to Chinese users worldwide. Later in 2006, simplified Chinese news was renamed to Google information. It offered 24 million WebPages in Chinese language and gained popularity. Google progressed slowly and steadily and became the leading search engine in the Chinese market. It lost its market share after a couple of years. Internet content in china was heavily censored due to which people faced problems and delays. By this time, Chinese search Engine Company “Baidu” emerged as the leading search engine company in China. Baidu’s search technology for the Chinese language was far superior to Google. To compete with Baidu, Google was forced to censor its content according to the standards set by the Chinese government and decided to launch its Chinese website www.google.cn

Why Google was shut down in China?

Censorship was the reason why Google shut down its operations in China. The Chinese government and the regulations in the internet market had an adverse effect on Google’s operation in China. In March 2009, the Chinese government blocked access to YouTube (One of Google’s service) due to footage of Chinese security forces. After this, they also stopped the access to the other Google services as they were not happy with Google’s censoring. Google discovered a cyber attack from within the country. During the investigation, Google found that many Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists had been hacked. China’s government denied any state of involvement in cyber attacks In January 2010; Google decided that it will no longer censor its search in china and closed the door on one of the largest markets in the world.

Criticism from US government

Google’s problem in china was multi-faceted. They faced criticism from the US government and Americans for their decision to enter China. Americans were unhappy with Google as they were cooperating with Chinese censorship.

Dragonfly project

This project was a secret project to build a censored search engine for the Chinese market, which was ended in December 2018. They aimed to build a search engine that would have linked user’s searches to their personal phone numbers and making it harder to avoid official surveillance. The search engine would have been required to censor certain search terms. This project would have offered china a search engine that blocked results of the sensitive political topics like Xinjiang, Tibet, and the Tiananmen square massacre which are already censored in the current search engines of the china. The public came to know about this project in august 2018, when The Intercept leaked an internal memo which was written by a Google employee after which it was shut down. However, some say that it still continued till March 2019 with only a few people involved in it. Later in July 2019 Google announce that work on the project Dragonfly is terminated. The project was harshly criticized from Google employees and users. Nearly 1400 Google employees signed a letter demanding more transparency about dragonfly and highlighting the human rights abuses. Google would have become complicit if Dragonfly was launched.
Today Google does not have a website in mainland China. They redirected all Chinese users to their Hong Kong uncensored website. Still, if people want to use Google services, they do it by using a VPN. Google is planning re-entry in China as it is attracted to china’s large economy and massive internet user market that could potentially lead to huge profits. For this, they are hiring people for dozens of positions. It is working towards an agreement to offer an app store for Android devices that would include only government-approved apps.… Read the rest

What Search Engines Compete with Google?

Since the launch of google back in the nineties, it has grown to become the most dominant search engine in the planet. Google has become a household name and its hardly impossible to mention something online without having to mention google. Well it is a well-known fact that google offers personalized services but it comes at a cost of sharing personal data and information allowing google to track our internet use. It becomes even more annoying when you see a lot of tailored content as well as ads targeting you.

Apart from google search engine there are many other search engines that have been customized to provide the kind of privacy and features that rivals google. Therefore, if goggle search engine does not impress you any more then below is a list of top search engines that rival google.

Bing

It is the second most popular search engine after google and has secured a good hold on the online market. It is basically a visual search engine that offers diverse tools to other users for better experience. The search results on this search engine is provided by Yahoo and its homepage has an ever-changing background that display a variety of pictures of places, people, animals and sports. In case you search for a video then it displays a grid of thumbnails that offer preview if your hover and plays the video on the same page upon click.

Bing also features ads and abilities such as translation, conversion, sports score, spellcheck and flight tracking among many more. It also features a mobile application for Android and iOS. The best thing about google search engine is that it provides video search features as well as special features for programmers.

DuckDuckGo

When it comes to seeking online privacy then DuckDuckGo is the best alternative. DuckDuckGo has gained popularity in most parts of the world due to its unique privacy policy. This search engine doesn’t track user activities which means that you will never find ads following you. The interface of the search engine is very clean in that it brings the search results from Yandex, Yahoo as well as other search engines. You can also add DuckDuckGo extension to the browser and this will enable you to keep your online activities private. You will find all the standard features available in google search engine but they have one additional feature called “bangs” that is worth mentioning. The search engine allows users to search directly on other websites like Wikipedia, Amazon by starting their query with an exclamation mark. The main reason why people use DuckDuckGo is because Google offers the best privacy alternative, it doesn’t track its users’ online activities and its user friendly.

Yahoo

Yahoos search engine is one of the oldest search engines online older than even google. It is the third most popular search engine after Bing. It has a lot to offer apart from just providing accurate search results. The web portal of yahoo search engine functions as an online shopping center, news generator, travel directory, games center and much more. Yahoo supports around 38 languages and is the default browser for most search engines such as Mozilla Firefox. Rather than just being a standalone Web portal yahoo provides a wide variety of services ranging from travel to sports. It has been integrated with Flickr making it even more powerful offering better image results. It also has a better privacy policy than Google.

Qwant

Qwant is a privacy-oriented search engine that is based in France. It is reckoned for not harvesting or tracking an individual search history. It sports many features similar to search engines like DuckDuckGo. It has a very interesting user interface that is quite pleasing and highlights trending topics such as news, stories on homepage in a very organized manner. Any term that you search on the search engine will be displayed in three different categories that is news, Web and Social. The search results that is well categorized will fulfill your query in a more efficient way and as for music lovers, the site has a dedicated section where an individual can discover new music and lyrics through the help of Artificial Intelligence.

Swisscows

Previously known as Hulbee, Swisscows is one of the top search engines that is preferred because of its privacy focused approach. It is very popular among parents who prefer a safer and more secure online experience for their kids. The search engine has a built-in filter for violent and pornographic content which cannot be overridden.

It does not store any personal data, search queries, IP address or other identifiers making it a better alternative to google. The best part is that it has its servers located in Switzerland which has one of the strictest privacy laws in the world. Swisscows has its own ad system that is based on targeted query and not your location. Apart from the strict privacy policy Swisscows provides suggestions whenever you type in any query.

Search Encrypt

Search encrypt is another metasearch engine that is privacy oriented and ensures that your online privacy remains at the forefront. The website doesn’t claim or track any identifiable information regarding the users instead it makes use of local encryption to secure your searches. The results are then retrieved from the network of search partners. Search results are usually retrieved from its network of search partners and does a great job in filtering bubble of personalized searches.

Start page

Start page offers a standalone search engine that displays its own results as opposed to Google and without the tracking. It also offers proxy servers to its websites so that users can browse safely and unanimously. The website has a custom URL generator which eliminates the cookie settings hence ensure cookie-free internet.

SearX

Searx is another metasearch engine that is worth mentioning. This search engine offers unbiased results from different sources in order to make the internet freer and more decentralized. The search engine retrieves result from numerous sources such as Google, Wikipedia, Yahoo and DuckDuckGO.

Read the rest