Chinese search engine Baidu has a Japanese version at baidu.jp. The below is excerpted from a promising new English-language blog written by a Chinese guy, Ya I yee:
Baidu, the leading search engine in China, recently launched its Japanese search engine.
But…as you saw the title, some Chinese male bloggers have noticed that it’s quite convenience to use the Japanese search engine to find something that could be found easily on other search engine – a scale of porn images, like this link and this (Warning: DO NOT click them if you are under 18).
According to the theory of Chinese Government, dirty images are not permitted and any foreign websites who provide porn pictures should be censored. So I’m wondering if the Baidu Japan will be blocked one day?
And then there’s this: Keso, king of China’s IT bloggers, recently posted the following information:
Baidu.jp users come from these countries:
China 55.9%
Japan 38.4%
Hong Kong 1.4%
United States 1.4%
United Kingdom 0.7%
The reason Baidu Japan has so many Chinese users can only be that they’re looking for stuff they can’t find on Baidu’s Chinese site.
So it is quite possible that Baidu Japan will get blocked in China, an indignity that Baidu will have to just put up with, or risk alienating their Japanese users by censoring the Japanese results in the same way as the Chinese results.
Which should cause howls of laughter and schadenfreude at Google and other foreign Internet companies in China.