Overcoming Google China and the Wall

kokonut pundits ^ | February 11, 2006 | McConnell

[kokonut]

Last month I was a guest blogger for Search Engine Journal (also here and here) covering the story about Bill Xia.

Bill Xia of Dynamic Internet Technology Inc (DIT) wrote in 2004 on the Chinese search engine query results that he and others have done for public release over the internet. Bill provided materials and tips on what web users to expect from using the Chinese Google version in doing searches when done inside and outside of China and how to avoid such firewall problems. Bill has a reason why he is doing this.

Bill Xia immigrated to the U.S. from China during the late 1990s. Over time he saw how the Chinese government kept a tighter and tighter control over Chinese web users inside China. And because of that frustration, he and few others started Dynamic Internet Technology as way to help Chinese users getaround the Chinese’s firewall.

Now, a new story has come out about Bill Xia that covers more of the details of his humanitarian work on providing crucial information that China would no doubt have them censored.

The seeds of DIT were sown when Xia arrived in the U.S. for grad school in the '90s. Stunned by America's openness, he realized his perception of reality had been warped growing up in China. "I was a believer of the propaganda," he recalls. And when Xia was exposed to all of the information on the Internet, it "started tearing apart what I'd accepted before." At the same time, the repression of Falun Gong at home angered him, though he insists it is Beijing's curbs on free expression that led him to found DIT in 2001. A year later he began building up a roster of clients, including VOA, Human Rights in China (HRIC), and Radio Free Asia.

[kokonut]

Something is fishy going on.

[TBP]

Google, Yahoo, and the rest of these companies should be ashamed of themselves.

[at bay]

They will answer to Congresss next week, and that is a good thing.