Ethan Gutmann, author of “Carrying a Torch for China,” this week’s cover story for THE WEEKLY STANDARD, noticed yesterday that his story couldn’t be found through Google News search, though it showed up in a search just the night before. In light of other suspicions that Google might be doing the bidding of the Chinese government, I called up Google for some answers. Google product manager Josh Cohen told me that indexing for Google News is “completely done via algorithms” and articles are not screened based on “qualititative aspects.” He added that Google will only take down articles upon the request of a publication’s own publisher or if a third party obtains a court order. He said we simply were experiencing a “technical issue.” For example, another story, “Vultures of the Left” by Dean Barnett, doesn’t show up in Google News, Cohen says, because Google’s program misinterpreted the article’s lede “On April 18, 2007” as the dateline. Other quirks and glitches are apparently responsible for articles disappearing from Google News. Gutmann’s article can now be found in Google News, so it seems that Google should get the benefit of the doubt. If any funny business were going on, then Matthew Continetti’s editorial on China, “Gold Medal in Tyranny,” probably wouldn’t show up. Of course, Google bears some responsibility for creating an atmosphere where suspicions can thrive in the first place. The real problem of censorship overseas still exists, and Google did not help matters by creating a censored version of it’s search function in China back in 2006. Cohen defended Google’s policies in China, saying that “China can certainly block whomever they want” on the mainland. “In other countries, they can block whatever sites they want to and that’s obviously something we can’t control.” As Gutmann noted in a 2002 WEEKLY STANDARD piece “Who Lost China’s Internet?” Western companies have been playing this game for some time now.
