Soap Box Jams asks: What does Xinhua have on Google?
“Xinhua is China’s so-called “news wire service.” I’ve noticed that the dreary state-owned wire service receives a lot of loving from Google News. Is this the result of some deal with the devil?”
UPDATE: No deal with the devil: Shanghai-based blogger Brad F explains:
“Google (automatically) tailors the news page for the region you’re in. If you’re on Chinese dialup, ADSL, or cable-modem, it can guess from your IP address that you’re in China. If you want to test this, use a proxy to access Google news, and see if Xinhua comes up on top. From my office computer, which uses a proxy in the US, I can’t find a single article from Xinhua.”