Over a month ago, Pacific Epoch announced that Google China was sued as it stopped using its feature of Cache. Cache stores webpages and the removal caused many websites to lose traffic and drop in rankings.
What makes the news interesting is whether Google Inc has come under the tight hold of the government of the People's Republic of China, as Phillip Lenssen suggests: “Whether or not the Chinese gov’t actively pressured Google to remove the feature – it’s another step in Google.cn becoming the kind of search engine the Chinese government (more precisely, its ministry of information) would like to see. Through control of one side of the technology – ISPs – the gov’t exerts indirect control over Google, as going by Google’s logic of “we need to shield Google users in China from broken links/ services"**, they can block certain features of Google to then have Google remove them on their end, too.â€
Censoring bits of Google is not the only method through which the government of the People's Republic of China can manipulate Google inc. Google Inc does not have their very own Internet Content Provider (it uses ganji.com) . Some news results aren't shown in Google China News, the reason in Google's own words, "it's clear that search results deemed to be sensitive for political or other reasons are inaccessible within China. There is nothing Google can do about this. Our launch of google.cn, though filtered, is a necessary first step toward achieving a productive presence in a rapidly changing country that will be one of the world's most important and dynamic for decades to come. To some people, a hard compromise may not feel as satisfying as a withdrawal on principle, but we believe it's the best way to work toward the results we all desire."
Besides China's Google News, Google Maps, Google Books and Google Images are also censored. Mr. Wang sued Google as “Google China's decision to stop offering a cache of webpages has hurt traffic to his siteâ€. The cache feature will be re-launched as when Google Inc relaunches after undergoing an upgrade.
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