What is Digg?41 Comments
- msaleem, on 10/12/2007, -2/+13http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_websites_by_number_of_visitors
rankings the top ten most visited websites as of May 24, 2006 are:
1. Yahoo! - US
2. Google - US
3. MSN - US
4. Baidu
5. MySpace - US
6. Yahoo! Japan
7. SINA.com
8. QQ.com
9. eBay - US
10. Sohu
Source: Alexa
Does that answer your question? - strictnein, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10@phpirate:
You're correct. Alexa's number aren't exactly gospel. For instance, I believe MySpace is #2 right now. - phpirate, on 10/12/2007, -3/+11%u201CYahoo is already handing over information about their customers %u2013 they cooperate with the Chinese on a regular basis," Pain said. "Google has so far refused to do this."
For people who still use Yahoo, they don't hesitate to giving away your private information.
@msaleem: since when has alexa become an accurate source of traffic information? It only applies to people who have the alexa toolbar installed, and smart people don't use that. Stupid people go to yahoo. Stupid people have the alexa toolbar. - muleking, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7http://img69.imageshack.us/img69/8497/picture24jc.png
Here's nice side by side of Google China (left) and Google US (right) with an image search of "tiananmen square"
Looks like the google skipped 1989 on their chinese site. - dallen, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5I go to Yahoo all the time for my fantasy baseball league, but the last time I used it for a web search was probably in the 90's
- strictnein, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Especially interesting coming from "progressive" companies like Yahoo and Google....
- Brightside, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Tiananmen Square Image Search for Yahoo US vs. Yahoo China (I translated Tiananmen Square using babel fish for the search on Yahoo China)
http://images.search.yahoo.com/search/images?ei=UTF-8&fr=sfp&p=Tiananmen Square
http://image.yahoo.com.cn/search?pid=yisou&source=ysearch_img_result_topsearch&chntotal=-1&entotal=-1&mip=all&miw=all&p=%CC%EC%B0%B2%C3%C5%B9%E3%B3%A1
Google translation of Yahoo China:
http://64.233.179.104/translate_c?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&langpair=zh-CN%7Cen&u=http://image.yahoo.com.cn/search%3Fpid%3Dyisou%26source%3Dysearch_img_result_topsearch%26chntotal%3D-1%26entotal%3D-1%26mip%3Dall%26miw%3Dall%26p%3D%25CC%25EC%25B0%25B2%25C3%25C5%25B9%25E3%25B3%25A1&prev=/language_tools&source=iframe_ - Bradl3y, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Yahoo is viewed more than Google, honestly, I believe that it is true, But in now way does that mean it is more popular as a search engine. Tons of people go to yahoo just because of the games. Some go for the news, and some use the email, not neccisarily for search.
- jer2eydevil88, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Yahoo hosts a lot of ad's on their servers in addition to the services they offer. Alexa may be reporting that as part of that rating system.
- acurism, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Another reason not to use Yahoo and make the switch to Google
- Tenareth, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3This isn't about the filtering, this story is about giving away information, which Google doesn't do.
Google admits they don't like doing the filtering, but it is better to have Google there with limits, it creates the start of information flow, it will become very difficult to control all the information on the Internet for long.
that is, Google IS doing the right thing. - muleking, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Have to love how freedom and human rights really just aren't very important when theres a market of a billion that needs to be tapped.
Welcome to the new world order. - TyRaNNOus, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3OMG china is spying and gathering information?!
.... I don't think I need to point out the irony for anyone living in the United States of America. Canada too probably we just haven't been busted yet.
I don't care about over there we need to save ourselves from this first. - Parmon, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2alexa's current listing for china
http://www.alexa.com/site/ds/top_sites?cc=CN&ts_mode=country&lang=none - Peterix, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I never liked yahoo and this gives me an another reason for it.
- b0wl0fud0n, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4Yahoo may not intentionally be setting a strict policy towards censorship. You have to consider how the Chinese state is run. The Communist Party is an exclusive group of members who actively recruit in order to increase their influence over the population.
During China's rapid economic growth as a result of foreign investment and a move towards a free market economy, the Communist Party was unable to cope with the rapidly changing environment and failed to make the transition into this environment and continued to recruit amongst traditional areas of the Chinese economy.
Thus this created serious problems since Communist Party penetration in privately owned companies to less than one percent. This generated tremendous amounts of fear within the organization since they realized that they were falling behind on the times and needed to aggressively recruit from the educated portions of the population.
Without new recruits within the new economy, the hold of the Communist Party on the population would be significantly weakened. A significant problem since the Communist Party's right to rule is derived from mostly propaganda and peer pressure. Few people feel like protesting the government because Chinese culture derives it's strength through strength by numbers. Belonging to a group is especially important to Chinese people and by going against the government, you suffer severe consequences socially, economically, etc.... You can easily see how the lack of Communist Party members within the richest and most profitable portions of the workforce could become a problem.
One of the reasons why penetration amongst the workforce in privately owned businesses was because of a lack of recruitment amongst the intellectuals in the country. The educated group has always been shunned by the Communist Party throughout it's existence (ie Cultural Revolution/Tianamen/Hundred Flowers Campaign). However, when Communist Party members began to leave their posts to work for private corporations, the party was forced to change and the Communist Party began significantly recruiting from intellectuals. Since this movement started, Communist Party penetration has now grown to the 5-6% range within privately owned companies (although many neglect their duties and fail to pay their dues).
My bet is that the Communist Party specifically targeted Yahoo when they were recruiting for new Communist Party members in order to create an internal system to maintain control and ensure that Yahoo, as a foreign privately owned company, wouldn't go too far out of line of Communist Party doctrine. There isn't much that Yahoo can do as a foreign company can do to change the internal culture of their Chinese employee workforce. You can't fight against the Chinese government. - ocram, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2"Looks like the google skipped 1989 on their chinese site."
The key is refining the search terms:
http://images.google.cn/images?svnum=10&hl=zh-CN&lr=&q=1989+Tienanmen+&btnG=%E6%90%9C%E7%B4%A2
http://images.google.cn/images?svnum=10&hl=zh-CN&lr=&q=tank+man&btnG=%E6%90%9C%E7%B4%A2
http://images.google.cn/images?svnum=10&hl=zh-CN&lr=&q=protests+1989&btnG=%E6%90%9C%E7%B4%A2
Although what searching using English on a Chinese language search engine proves I don't know. - oblivinated, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2He's right, the west should worry about the west.
- digitaldivider, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2only people like grandma and grandpa you gave your old pentium II/III system use yahoo search/portal services for anything. The vast majority of us here on digg know that google is the superior search engine. More along the point of the article, both companies are censoring in China because that's what the chinese want them to do in order to have business stakes in their country, the only think you've left to decide is who is the lesser of two evils?
. Google never gave away our information to the government because they had no reason to. Aside from taking a small hit from investors, that really did nothing too negative to google. now yahoo on the otherhand, is loathed by those in the technological know just due to the fact that we all know those bastards are logging our IP and if we're dumb enough, our search terms as well. As long as google supports the privacy of their users, I'll support google. - Philipp_Lenssen, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2The source of the article:
http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=18015 - khyberkitsune, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2@oblivinated
Yea, there sure are plenty of reasons to use Yahoo. Like their instant messenger that resets your internet security levels upon install, activates ActiveX and exposes your system to vulnerabilities, and the fact that their installer STILL installs Yahoo! Mail when you TELL IT NOT TO.
***** Yahoo and anyone associated with it. - phpirate, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3I don't mean everyone. I know for a fact that my sister uses yahoo and she considers spyware as "new features that Microsoft is giving her". More people who use google for gmail and its other services seem to be more technologically aware.
- khyberkitsune, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Google Censors - It doesn't tell the government who's dissenting against them like Yahoo does.
- nikkesen, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2People with limited internet access or those who don't know any alternatives.
- t1c52002, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Not to that I approve any form of censorship, but this "study" was apparently based on a total of 10 queries which is rather limited in scope.
- invader, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1:)
when i read the title, i knew the first comment would be anti-google. I was right!
at least google created an *Optional,* chinese-approved version so you can get your non-politically-sensitive queries returned fast.
google.com is UNcensored (by google..) in china, but because of ISP filters slowing or blocking.. making availability an issue. i don't agree with Cerf's comments recently, and i agree more with the initial press release by Google explaining why they launched the self-censored version of google.
imho, google has one of the best chinese policies, yet they still get bashed when more light gets shed on how its competitors are worse... anti-fanboyism at its best :D - CornStarch, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I'm not blaming other companies for China's bull.
- invader, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1sorry for double post.. i was adding/editing and my time ran out and it deleted my changes..
i was adding that there was notable Google anti-fanboy activity when the news pointed out that Google was fighting the government's request for its search records. Google REFUSED to give up its users' data to the government.... yet people got up in arms AGAINST Google, when the other search engines willingly gave up all the information the government requested...
seriously... this anti-fanboyism is usually very irrational..
how DARE Google stand up for us!!! they're so EVIL!!
how DARE Google provide an alternative, more accessible version of its search engine for those that have trouble accessing the main site that is blocked/filtered by their government! they should be like everyone else and self-censor more and work with the chinese government to attack its users!!!!
/sarcasm - djNullSpace, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Shouldn't it be "most strict" and "more strict"?
- invader, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1google censors google.cn = non-politically-sensitive queries are fast in china now! yes!
google doesn't censor google.com = government steps in and censors/filters/blocks queries anyway! - SmeRndmGy, on 10/12/2007, -4/+4This is another reason I can't bring myself to switch from firefox to flock. Too much integration with yahoo. Paid yahoo search box, integration with various other yahoo-owned websites. I do not want to support a company that is this evil. At least this isn't as bad as the time they turned the guy over to the Chinese government to be punished for looking at certain websites and speaking freely in emails. If google's motto is "do no evil", yahoo's motto seems like it should be "do as much evil as possible without people comparing you to Hitler". At least the Chinese know what information is being kept from them. Who knows what websites will land you on a "terrorist" watch list if you visit them in this country. Some company should make a search engine that keeps no records of customer use. Completely anonymous. Maybe p2p based in some way. That way even if some government tries to tell them to block something or turn over customer records like various unethical governments are currently trying to do to various search companies, there would not be any records to turn over, and no way to block certain content. Unfortunately even if you can trust whatever company you use with your information, the government can still get them to turn over your confidential records, often in realtime, like they do with your phone calls right now. This kind of censorship and invasion of privacy is a major problem of the information age, and you are kidding yourself if you think it only happens in places like China. This kind of stuff is happening right here in the US right now, and we need to take care of that if we want to have any credibility telling other countries not to do the same thing.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Alexa numbers are misleading and just plain wrong. They rely on statistics compiled from people with the alexa software on their computer, and personally, i dont allow crap like that on my computer, so....people like me are not in the stats. and I am really all that matters.
- sroberson, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1I stopped using Yaxoo! out of protest over these issues. I used to use them as a homepage and their email/calendaring. But after they've provided the CCP regime with the email boxes of whomever the CCP asked for- and their subsequent disappearance- I moved away from Yaxoo!
But the censorship is actually way worse than you'd imagine. The government doesn't even tell them what to filter. Every company in China practices self-censorship. So, when Yahoo is the strictest, they're filtering items that they merely think the CCP won't like.
As for Google, I feel they made a bad mistake with google.cn. They should pull it. They should display ALL valid search results and if users can't click the link because the ISP's US-company-provided routers are blocking those sites, they should know this and complain (mostly this is done anonymously in BBSs).
As a previous poster said, the more people wanting change, the sooner it will happen, and the CCP house of cards will one day fall. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0It'd be funny if one of these companies had the balls to make a huge front page saying, "Your government is lying to you." with a ***** of links to the truth.
That would be purely amazing. I would seriously do that if I were the CEO of Yahoo or Google simply because it would be like anything ever done before on a massive scale.
I wonder if China would declare war after that? :P - dallen, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2Google censors too. Too bad no one is willing to take a stand on this issue
- mydiggname, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Yahoo searches are typically much more relevant than Google's IMO. I like yahoo.
- oblivinated, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2@phpirate
"Stupid people go to yahoo."
Don't stereotype people like that. Yahoo offers plenty of services that Google does not, there are plenty of good reasons to use Yahoo. - hansmast, on 10/12/2007, -2/+0@jer2eydevil88: If that's the case, then it would be weighted toward Google which displays far, far more ads.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1Not a tank to be seen! Seriously though, I hope Google eventually does the right thing.
- imtigger2, on 10/12/2007, -8/+2***** China.
Yahoo rocks. I don't see why everyone is so against Yahoo and have their heads so far up Googles ass. I use Google for search, but I wouldn't blow them like most people would. Yahoo's homepage and new online email program are pretty cool.
Btw, I feel ALL these search engines are money-grabbing, personal-info giving, bastards. You just have to be careful and go with what you like. As well, Yahoo used to be really cool when they were running the "do you.... Yahoo!?" commercials. I still think they're cool, and yes, I know better, and no, I don't need the online spreadsheet, sketcher or suck-ass, horrible interface, crappy quality, video offerings from Google, but I do like their search results (which are getting worse every day because of adsense fraud).
All just my opinion... now bury me because of it. ;) - Delphion, on 10/12/2007, -14/+7who the hell still uses yahoo?
i sold my soul the dev....uh, i mean google a long time ago.
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