US search engines 'hijacked' in China: analysts

1 hour ago

WASHINGTON (AFP) US Internet search engines in China were being hijacked and directed to Chinese-owned Baidu, analysts said Wednesday, speculating that the move was in retaliation for Washington's award to Tibet's exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama.

Analysts at Search Engine Roundtable, a website focusing on Internet search, said Chinese users trying to search on Google, Yahoo and Microsoft websites were being directed to the Chinese search engine.

Google confirmed the blocking of its Chinese search engine and Microsoft said it was looking into the matter.

"It seems like China is fed up with the US, so as a way to fight back, they redirected virtually all search traffic from Google, Yahoo and Microsoft to Baidu, the Chinese based search engine," analysts Danny Sullivan and Barry Schwartz wrote at Search Engine Roundtable.

The authors said it was not clear exactly how or why the searches were being redirected, but China is known for tightly controlling the Internet and using a variety of filters to screen out search results for issues relating to dissidents or the 72-year-old Tibetan spiritual leader.

"Some have accused Baidu of hijacking the traffic, but we think it's likely that China is upset with the US over the award it granted to the Dalai Lama and is retaliating by hurting US-based search engines," Sullivan and Schwartz said.

On Wednesday, US President George W. Bush called for an end to "religious repression" in China as he defiantly became the first US leader to appear in public with the Dalai Lama.

The Tibetan spiritual leader accepted the Congressional Gold Medal, lawmakers' highest civilian honor, in a formal ceremony in the US Capitol's ornate Rotunda -- a move certain to further enrage leaders in Beijing.

A Google spokesman told AFP: "We've had numerous reports that Google.cn and other search engines have been blocked in China and traffic redirected to other sites."

"While this is clearly unfortunate, we've seen this happen before and are confident that service will be restored to our users in the very near future," the spokesman said.

Microsoft, queried about the incident, said through a spokesman: "We are looking into this matter."

On the Webpronews website, Doug Caverly wrote: "In all likelihood, Baidu, by itself, isn't powerful enough to pull off this switch. Onlookers suspect the Chinese government."

TechCrunch analyst Duncan Riley also cited the "hijacking" and added, "the redirects are more widespread than we first thought" and that the Google-owned video site YouTube also was being blocked.

"There is some suggestion that the news of the Dalai Lama being awarded a prize by US President George W. Bush may be behind the move, but this is unable to be confirmed," Riley said.

"I've written previously on the possibility that China may use its firewall as an economic tool as opposed to a censorship tool alone, and although censorship may be partially behind today's blanket ban of US search sites, the redirect to Baidu would indicate an economic motive."

Digital Market Blog said it was able to confirm the hijacking as well.

"In our office there's about 30 machines ... If you do a search on Yahoo.com (any search) you get redirected to Baidu (as shown below) and shown Chinese results," the analysts from the site wrote.