‘Bing’ blocked by Chinese government
Added: (Thu Jan 24 2019)
Pressbox (Press Release) -
Microsoft’s (NASDAQ:MSFT) Search engine service ‘Bing’ has been blocked by the Chinese government under new regulations. The order from the government implementing the new regulations regarding China’s access to certain sites has been confirmed by state-owned Chinese communications company China Unicom (NYSE:CHU). According to the statement made by a Microsoft spokesperson, “we can confirm that Bing is currently inaccessible to mainland Chinese residents due to the government’s strict regulations and their ‘firewall’”.
As this has been confirmed by Microsoft and Unicom, Microsoft now joins the same club as Google, who in 2010 made the decision to pull their well-known search engine with the same name from china. Bing was the only foreign search engine that was available to Chinese residents behind the government’s strict regulations, and even made huge changes to their algorithm in china to comply with the countries strict policy.
It hasn’t been made clear exactly the reasoning behind the block, Chinese internet regulators have not responded yet with a statement. Microsoft which recently overtook apple to become the most valuable publicly traded company, has faced many setbacks in china previously.
Microsoft’s Skype, one of the world’s leading communication platforms, was removed from the Apple store and Google play in china back in November of 2017. But it is not a personal attack against Microsoft, many American internet giants are facing a battle with the Chinese marketplace. Everyday platforms like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter have all been blocked for years due to the government’s strict censorship.
Chinese Censorship is one of a kind, and has cracked down on content about subjects that are deemed sensitive by Beijing officials. Including Tibet, the Tiananmen Square massacre, and criticism of the president Xi Jinping. The regulators behind the great firewall have also been known to punish website creators that fail to meet their standards of deletion of pornography and crude content that the ruling Communist party considers harmful to society.
The Internet society of china a government run body who Microsoft is part of, make a pledge to not “establish links to online websites that contain harmful information” and to not share content which would “jeopardize state security, cause any disruption to social stability, or be contradictory towards laws and regulations”. This is just part of a long list that internet companies must adhere to if they wish to operate in China.
However for companies like Microsoft who do follow Chinas strict censorship regulations have access to one of the largest internet using societies of the modern day, China alone has hundreds of millions of internet users, and a huge online E-commerce market, making it easy to see why American companies want in on this thriving markets.
Liam Chow – Middleton Associates