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The rumor I've heard here in Beijing is that, among other things, the Chinese government was interested in the actual search-engine tech to help fuel their own
by garply 17y ago
The rumor I've heard here in Beijing is that, among other things, the Chinese government was interested in the actual search-engine tech to help fuel their own CCTV search engine (which is to eventually be expanded beyond video search). Baidu is not considered friendly enough to government policies, so they want to spin their own version.
Just a rumor, but it doesn't sound too outlandish to me.
(An interesting and tangential question is how good could a state-run search engine be? My personal belief is that they could make it pretty good if they really focused on it (consider, for example, the Soviet Union and the nuclear arms race)).
- jacquesm 17y agoThere was an aborted attempt at a German/French initiative that was supposed to become the de-facto search engine for the European Union. I personally don't think a state run search engine stands even a tiny chance.
- garply 17y agoPresumably the Germans / French had a lot less to lose with a failed search engine, whereas the Chinese stand to lose control of the next medium of communication. I'm sure in the minds of many of the people planning this, the idea is that the internet is just the latest iteration of communication technology (like the newspaper, TV, etc), and as such the government should have a significant presence there in the same way as it does with The People's Daily and CCTV.
- jacquesm 17y agoAh, sorry, you're absolutely right. I watched the movie in German, never for a second thought they would have translated the title for the English release. It's pretty obvious they would have translated the title too.
- jacquesm 17y agoHow on earth did that comment end up here ? it was supposed to go below a completely different one...