Web Users Fault China's Baidu On Censorship
Chinese Internet-search company Baidu.com Inc. has been defending itself against claims in the media and Internet chat forums that it allegedly censored online information about the growing scandal over tainted milk powder.
The company, which runs China's largest search engine by market share, has faced criticism from users of popular sites such as online community Tianya.com and forum host Mop.com. The users accuse the company of working on behalf of milk producers to bury online links to news stories about the contamination that has killed several infants and sickened thousands of children.
Baidu acknowledged it was approached by several dairy producers who offered to pay the company to drop critical news articles from its search results. Baidu said it 'flat out refused' to screen unfavorable news.
The Web site of Chinese newspaper 21st Century Business Herald posted screenshots of purported Internet searches on Sept. 12 for a blog post criticizing one of the country's milk producers. The newspaper's screenshot purported to show 11 search results, while Google Inc.'s China site, Google.cn, showed 11,400.
On Friday, a search for the article by its title turned up 378 results on Baidu and 13,500 results on Google.cn. Wednesday, the search showed 3,860 hits on Baidu and 39,300 on Google.
Baidu declined to comment on the alleged differences.
Internet analysts said technological differences could explain potentially different search results.
Sky Canaves
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