All hail the App Store
China expanded its crackdown on "vulgar" online content to 14 additional sites, including Microsoft's MSN, reports Reuters.
The ruling Communist Party also accused Google of doing an insufficient job of policing its own search results.
Google took significant flak from American users when in 2006 it agreed to "comply with local Chinese laws and regulations" to operate in that market. In addition to other politically sensitive topics, the search giant filters sites that discuss Falun Gong, "democracy" and Tiananmen Square.
MSN was chastised for the availability of inappropriate images on its film channel, as well as for the inclusion of "selected pictures" on its social messaging section, which appeared on China's Internet Illegal Information Reporting Center website.
The new year marks a fragile period for China. 2009 marks the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square incident; meanwhile, blogs have become major points of news consumption for many of its 300 million registered internet users.
To fortify itself against riots and protests, the Chinese government deploys near-invisible troops of cyberspace patrols, as well as means for internet companies and citizens to police themselves and each other. It also possesses a network of controls that enable it to shut websites down, or simply block individual pages.
Last Thursday the government issued an update on the 14 sites targeted for bad behavior online. Only three, it concluded, did a sufficient job of cleaning up; Google, which avails "vulgar" pictures on its Image Search page, remains on the naughty list.
Neither Microsoft nor Google provided a comment on the matter.
In October 2008, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft worked with journalists and human rights advocates to form the Global Network Initiative, which outlines loose rules of engagement for corporate operation in countries where human rights are limited. Among other things, the rules stipulate that tech sites operating in politically sensitive areas develop whistle-blowing and conflict resolution mechanisms internally.
They are also admonished to "narrowly interpret and implement government demands that compromise privacy," reported the Wall Street Journal.
