Technology

Internet censorship is the process of enacting controls to suppress the publishing of or access to information on the World Wide Web in the same way that rules can exist within a country to censor the publishing of certain information. However, internet censorship, due to limitations on censorship technologies, may not prevent access to information stored in servers outside the servers that exist outside the borders of the country implementing the censorship policy (Kitazume, 2010). In the Peoples Republic of China, information related to Tibetan and Taiwanese independence, police brutality, pornography, freedom of speech and expression plus the Tiananmen Square Protests of 1989 is censored by the government (Wines, 2010). Google aims at providing information to all users of the internet, and this has been the source of conflict between the corporation and the Chinese government.

Technology used in China to block internet access
The Chinese government has put up an elaborate technical system to block access to the categories of information listed above. Below is a brief description of the main technologies employed.

Uniform Resource Location (URL) Internet Filtering This is a technology in which internet content requested by an internet user is scanned by servers located at internet gateways for targeted key words (Thompson, 2006). For example, the key words Tiananmen Riots, if detected in content requested by a user, will lead to the whole webpage being blocked. This protocol works in the hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) and may be circumvented using encryption protocols or escaped characters in the page.

Internet Protocol (IP) Blocking This is the use of codes to deny access to IP addresses containing material that is censored (Wines, 2010). All IP-based internet data transfer protocols including hypertext (HTTP), file transfer protocol (FTP) and POP are all affected by this censorship technology. Google had allocated additional internet protocol addresses to prevent IP-based blocking but the block was redefined to cover even the new addresses and IPs (Wines, 2010).

Domain Name System (DNS) Filtering This technology involves not resolving domain names or returning incorrect IP addresses requested by a user of the internet (Thompson, 2006). IP-based internet protocols like HTTP, FTP, POP and others are all affected by this censorship technology.
China blocks searches bearing the names of political leaders but the problem with the system is that the system is in some ways so crude that it blocks harmless content for example, typing the word Carrot while in China returns no results as the word contains a Chinese character that is also found in the surname of the President of the republic, Hu Jintao (Branigan, 2010). This leads to limitations in the access to information. With censorship efforts being stepped up, several websites and blogs have been shut down because of publicly speaking up about corruption, the manufacture of substandard goods and contaminated baby and human foodstuffs (Branigan, 2010).

Google-China row the cause
The Peoples Republic of China, due to its tough censoring policy, restricts the nature of information a person can access from the internet. The levels of censorship vary from one population group or another but ultimately affect the entire population. For example, residential places and restaurants that serve people who are not Chinese nationals have more relaxed censorship but in some public schools, there is prevention in the use of search engines (Wong, 2010).

Google Corporation runs the largest search engine and advocates for a free internet but the Chinese governments policy of censorship affects its business in the country. The search engine had imposed upon itself some censorship measures for its Chinese site HYPERLINK httpwww.google.cnwww.google.cn but in March of this year, it stopped censoring search results in China (Wines, 2010).

Google reneged on an earlier agreement it had signed with the Chinese government to censor search results in China in line with the Governments censorship policy after complaining of cyber attacks the corporation said they were coming from the Chinese government (Wong, 2010). These attacks are alleged to have targeted Google and other IT companies and are believed to have originated from within the borders of China. They resulted in loss of information on the part of Google, and are said to have targeted the e-mail addresses of human rights activists hosted by Googles Gmail. As a consequence of this attack, Google announced that it would have to review its Chinese operations in China.

The Chinese government in turn accused Google having intricate ties with the United States government and of providing information on searches conducted in China to intelligence agencies in the United States (Branigan, 2010). Google protested the interference of its operations and moved its operations from mainland China to Hong Kong. Commentators hailed the move by Google as plausible, having the opinion that at last a multinational corporation was finally stepping up to protect its consumers basic human rights and freedoms saying that internet censoring in the Peoples Republic of China violates peoples right to information.


Consequences of the Google-China row
Googles capacity for business
Google is the most popular search engine in the world but the Chinese online search market is dominated by Baidu. However, Google derives almost 2 percent of its 24 billion U.S dollars in annual revenue from the Chinese market. In addition to this, the Chinese IT market is the most rapidly growing market in the world (Reuters, 2010). If Google were to fully withdraw from China, its long-term strategy for building the broadest search engine and information database will be significantly compromised (Reuters, 2010).

The social impact
The internet is rapidly becoming the preferred source of information for many Chinese citizens. In fact, internet usage in the Peoples Republic of China is expanding at a rate much higher than her economic growth. Over 100 million users conduct business on the internet, and over 400 million people, especially the younger generation, use the internet on a regular basis (Kitazume, 2010). The internet has therefore revolutionized the way people gain access to news and information bearing in mind that the news appear on the internet are very different from what state and other conventional media line television and newspapers report. The withdrawal of Google will thus be a victory for the suppressors of free information movement and by extension democracy and other human rights.

Conclusion
After the exit of Google from the Chinese market, Baidu, Chinas leading search engine has emerged to be a big winner. Its market domination of the Chinese market rose from 59 percent to over 64 percent, and so has its revenue (Reuters, 2010). Google is still however selling advertisements in mainland China through its Hong Kong-based site HYPERLINK httpwww.google.hkwww.google.hk, but the content of the latter makes use of simplified characters of the Chinese language which may lead to erosion in the quality of information.