The blocking of Google in China has benefitted the competitors against Google by increasing revenue, and the government for regulating the internet's contents by banning keywords surrounding criticism towards the government and illegal activity.
By Colin O'Hare
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Chinese's First Internet Connection
In 1994, the NCFC administration decided that making a working internet connection for China would be more beneficial for science, technology and foreign affairs. The main problem when creating the connection was sufficient funding. This was later solved by financial suport from Ministry of science and technology, the National Natural Science Foundation, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, as well
as the World Bank loan, the decision was carried out. -
Government Controlling Internet Searches
The Chinese government begins to block and censor anti-government and democratic messages posted online. This is the starting point of Chinese censorship online. As time goes on, more and more topics will be erased -
Golden Shield Project
This is the first major project that the Chinese government launches in order to maintain order on their internet. The main purpose is to filter out superstitious, pornographic, violence-related, gambling and other harmful information. -
Google Becomes Available in China
Google.com begins to negotiate with Chinese Internet regulators about operating in their boundaries. They eventually agreed, however with the filtering performed by the internet providers, the website was slow, inefficient and didn't work 10% of the time. 3 Months later, Google was blocked for no reason, then unblocked after a short period of time. -
Google.com Blocked in China
Shortly after its launch, Google was blocked even though they complain that they followed all regulations and laws. It is however blocked again 1 year later. -
CIIRC Formed
The China Internet Illegal Information Reporting Centre was created in order to monitor the internet at all times. They receive public reports about harmful and illegal information being spread within Chinese borders, and it's their job to deal with it. They deal with problems such as obscenity and pornography, gambling, violence, terror, criminal abetting, and contents that spread ethnic hatred, violating the others' rights, and violating intellectual property rights -
111 Million Chinese Internet Users
China has no surpassed the U.S in internet users and companies are beginning to get into the Chinese market. The CNNIC (Chinese Internet Network Information Centre) has reported an 18% growth rate. -
Google Launches Google.cn in China
Google.com originally was introduced in China due to the massive market that was to be held. Google however disobeyed the internet regulations that China enforced them to do. This led to google.cn to be created and all regulations would be followed on that website. However, in return China must allow Google.com to continue to operate while still obeying some of the laws. -
Google.com Blocked Again in China
Google.com is blocked for the third time while Google.cn continues to operate. No known cause is found for why Google.com was blocked. -
China Blocks Google's Website "Youtube"
The CIIRC blocked Youtube on Google.cn because a video was leaked about Chinese security forces beating Tibetans, and since Tibet was already a blocked keyword on google's search engine, this made relations between google and the government more separated. At this time, google.cn is aggravated at the government and tries to restore access to the site with no success. -
Baidu Still Destroys Google in User Count
Baidu beats Google.cn 83.6% to 11.4%. Google is beginning to lost faith in the Google.cn project -
Google Attacked by China
A series of attacks online were directed towards many major companies and Chinese freedom activist's emails. This led to Google.cn stating that their content will no longer be censored and all government laws and regulations will be ignored. -
Google.cn Transferring to Google.hk
All people who go type google.cn will automatically be transfered to Google.hk, a non-censored version of the website. They claim that they are 100% aware that in doing so, China will proceed to block them. -
Google.cn and Google.com Officially Banned and Blocked in China
After the confrontation, Google.cn and all other web sources relating to google.com have all been blocked in China. -
Baidu Reaps the benefits that Google Left Behind
Baidu will see its global share of search ad revenues increase from 6.4 percent in 2013 to 8.8 percent in 2015, according to new data from eMarketer. -
VPN control
Due to the blocking of google, many people have resorted to using a VPN to bypass the Firewall. The keyword search has raised nearly 60% since the blocking of Google. Now, China has tightened the restrictions on it, deeming all use of it to be illegal, unless gotten permission by the government -
Conclusion and Evaluation
The blocking of Google is just one example of how China's internet regulations have changed overtime. The regulations and laws got stricter since the beginning. The constant harassment that Google put up with lead to the indefinite ban of Google. The effects are mostly economical and political. The revenue for Baidu increased 8 percent since the blocking of Google and the government can now block out criticism while still maintaining a regulated online presence.
