China has accused both Google and Baidu as peddlers of filth. Baidu is known as China’s Google. According to the Chinese government, the country has “decided to launch a nationwide campaign to clean up a vulgar current on the Internet.” 19 Internet operators and websites that were previously identified have not removed their “vulgar” contents, according to officials. They have also ignored warnings from government censors.

Baidu has already apologized for the pornographic material published on its sites, while Google has been said to be attempting to take down obscene content. These two search engines have probably realized that it can be futile to simply ignore China. Not only is the population of users huge in this country; obscene content is obscene content any place on earth. There is still a general, though oftentimes unspoken, ground rule over websites of general patronage not to feature harmful material to children and youth.

Besides, giving in to China’s demands can only bring good business. The January-September 2007 period saw a 75.8 percent year-over-year growth in China’s online search market. This translates to US$682.37 million. Baidu.com, the world’s biggest Chinese-language search engine, saw a market share growth in China of up to 62.9 percent from January to September 2008 alone. This translated to US$332.85 million for the period mentioned. From January to September 2008, Google, the second-largest online search engine in China, grew by 26.9 percent in market share. It pays to follow rules.

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Via TweakTown