Google Search Results in Warning Entire Internet

Today, some searchers found every site in Google's search results carried the warning that: "This site may harm your computer". Users who attempted to click through the results saw the "interstitial" warning page that mentions the possibility of badware and refers people to StopBadware.org for more information.

The problem affected internet pages across the whole planet, and lasted for around 40 minutes before engineeers were able to fix it.

"We periodically receive updates to that list and received one such update to release on the site this morning. Unfortunately (and here's the human error), the URL of '/' was mistakenly checked in as a value to the file and '/' expands to all URLs. Fortunately, our on-call site reliability team found the problem quickly and reverted the file," Google said in its official blog.

Google Earth Layer Blocked in China

China appears to have blocked access to the popular internet maps service - Google Earth. Google Earth is a virtual globe program that displays satellite images of varying resolution of the Earth's surface, allowing users to visually see things like cities and houses from a bird's eye view.

Google's map and satellite-photo service offered Chinese Internet users something they rarely could see: a bird's-eye view of the secret compound of Zhongnanhai(located west of the Forbidden City), where the country's top leaders live and work.

But in recent weeks, some layer of Google Earth(such as Google Earth Community) could not load and work in China. The Google Earth Community is an online forum which is dedicated to producing placemarks of interesting or educational perspectives. It may be found on the Google Earth webpage or under the Help section on the program itself. After downloading a placemark, it will automatically run Google Earth (if not opened), and fly to the area specified by the person who placed it. Once there, you can add it to your "My Places" by right clicking on the icon and selecting "Save to My Places". Additionally, anyone can post a placemark for others to download; as long as you have an account.



When I run a proxy program, and open Google Earth again, the Google Earth Community layer is right there, everything is ok.



Then I close the proxy program and click the layer again, it's tell me "Fetch of NetworkLink failed(http://mw1.google.com/): Connect Failed."



That mean the Weather,Gallery and Global Awareness layer is blocked in China. Google Earth Community is in the Gallery layer,  so it cannot be open again.

If the Chinese government is blocking its own citizens from seeing where their leaders live, whereas the rest of the world can see just fine, we're talking some major institutional paranoia.

Google Retiring AdSense Referrals Program

Google started introducing the AdSense Referral Program in November 2005 where publishers can get $100 bonus when they successfully referred someone into the AdSense network.

They slowly continued this program to include Google products (AdWords, AdSense, Picasa) as well as FireFox with Google Toolbar. And though western publishers get $1 for every Firefox downloads they refer, Asian publishers like in the China only get 10% of that referral fee or $0.10 (sometimes ever as low as $0.01).

Today Google has announced they will be ending their AdSense referrals program. AdSense Referrals allows you to include product referral links which cane be bought or downloaded. When a user from your site buys or downloads something via that link, you get a commission of the sale. Most popular referral links include Firefox and AdSense ad units. Today they announced that they will be officially stopping them by the end of August 2008.

An email from Google AdSense confirms that Google is terminating AdSense referrals:

We’re constantly looking for ways to improve AdSense by developing and supporting features which drive the best monetization results for our publishers. Sometimes, this requires retiring existing features so we can focus our efforts on the ones that will be most effective in the long term. For this reason, we will be retiring the AdSense Referrals program during the last week of August. We appreciate your patience during this transition and here are some alternative options to consider:

• Google Affiliate Network: As part of the integration of DoubleClick, the DoubleClick Performics Affiliate Network will now operate as the Google Affiliate Network for advertisers targeting users located in the United States. Similar to the AdSense Referrals program, the Google Affiliate Network enables publishers to apply for advertiser programs and get paid based on advertiser-defined actions instead of clicks or impressions. For further details, please visit: http://www.google.com/ads/affiliatenetwork/.


• AdSense for content ads: If you have less than three AdSense for content ad units on a page, you may wish to replace the referral ad units with standard AdSense for content ad units.

If you currently use referral ads, either to promote Google products or offerings from AdWords advertisers, AdSense Referrals code will no longer display ads beginning the last week of August. We encourage you to take the following steps before the product is retired:

• Remove the referral code from your site(s): Please take a moment to remove all referral code from your sites before the last week of August, so you can continue to effectively monetize your ad space.


• Run and save all referrals reports on your desktop: Create and save all reports related to the referrals program on your desktop, so you continue to have access to your valuable campaign information.

Google Translation Gadget

Google released a translation gadget which can translate blog or website easily from one language to another. According to wikipedia only 35.2% of the internet users are English, so it makes sense to add translation widgets for your blog to increase the reach for your blog.

Google Translator widget supports lots of languages as of now if your primary language is English. This widget also served through Javascript and carries a link Google Translator and Google Gadgets.

Add the Google Translate gadget to your webpage is quick and easy. Its offer instant access to automatic translations of that page. Go to Google Translate gadget, select the language of your webpage, copy and paste the HTML to include the gadget on your webpage.

Google Blogspot And Google Pages Unblocked In China

The free blog hosting services Google Blogspot and the free homepage hosting Google Pages are accessible in China today.

Some days before, Google BlogSpot is blocked again after the the 17th Party Congress finished in BeiJing , but after YouTube unblocked, the Google Blogspot and Google Pages both unblocked now, that surprise me, those blocking are extremely arbitrary.

Hope that is not temporary unblocked.

Update: Google Blogger(Blogspot) was blocked in China again a week ago.

How To Visit Google BlogSpot In China

Most efforts(using proxy or editing hosts file, for example) to bypass The Wall can work, . I'm going to write 2 methods dedicated for blogspot.

The easier way is to use pkblogs, who provides accesss to blogs "blocked in India, Pakistan, Iran or China". But I think pkblogs itself may be blocked soon.

The more technical way (by Dance In The Dark) is to assign "*.blogspot.com" to an alternative IP address which is not banned yet, by configuring proxy settings of Firefox with following steps:

1. Create a new text file and write the following codes
   

   function FindProxyForURL(url,host){
   if(dnsDomainIs(host, ".blogspot.com")){
     return "PROXY 72.14.219.190:80";
   }
   }

   
   


2. Save it as C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\local\proxy.pac


3. In Firefox, open Tools(menu)->Options(menu)->Advanced(tab)->Network(tab)->Connect, Settings(button)->Automatically Proxy Configuration URL(box), enter:
   

   
   

   file:///C:/Program%20Files/Mozilla%20Firefox/local/proxy.pac

   
   


4. Say OK to close all dialogs. Now you can try someone.blogspot.com

Problems:

1. The IP we used here 72.14.219.190 may be banned in the future, you will need to google for new solutions at that time.


2. IE is also known to support auto proxy configuration, but I can't get it work. (via)

Google BlogSpot Blocked Again In China

The most popular blog host BlogSpot is blocked again after the the 17th Party Congress finished in BeiJing.

In the south China, BlogSpot is not accessible all the while, but in the north China, BlogSpot was suddenly accessible on October 15 in BeiJing. The 17th Party Congress started on October 15. Some believe that the current unblocking may be related to the 17th Party Congress, temporarily allowing the major foreign journalists to access their favorite BlogSpot. So the BlogSpot was only unblock in north China, on October 15. After the Congress's finishing, the BlogSpot is blocked again.

An unblocking of the site last year led to the availability of a Shanghai-based foreign blogger known as Chinabounder, whose blog recounted the author's sexual exploits with Chinese women while working as an English teacher. The posts ultimately led to an unsuccessful hunt for the author and a temporary closing of the blog(via).

Baidu Hijacking Google, Yahoo, Microsoft In China

Numerous users find that if they trying to access Google, Yahoo, or Microsoft search engines from China are being redirected to Chinese-owned search engine Baidu yesterday.

Chinese DNS servers are under government control, some have accused Baidu of hijacking the traffic, but some suspect that Chinese government has unilaterally blocked there US search engines in China and is redirecting all requests to Baidu.

Hijacking Google Blog Search

Hijacking Yahoo Search

Hijacking Microsoft Live Search

Earlier this week, Beijing has been ramping up its filtering of political sites in an attempt to stifle political dissent leading up to the Communist Party Congress, a meeting in which leaders are selected to serve under the president for the next five years. The most popular online video website YouTube is also blocked in China yesterday.

Google Launches Chinese Blog Search

Today, Google released a Chinese version of Google Blog Search, the URL is blogsearch.google.cn . The IP address of "Chinese Blog Search" is in Bei Jing. Now Chinese users can use Google blog search services in simplified Chinese language.

According to Google Chinese Blog, the Chinese version of Google Blog Search can track most of Chinese blog service providers,including Sina blog, Sohu blog, Tencent blog, 163.com blog, Baidu space, and other blog networks.

Meanwhile, Google blog search is also support most standalone blogs, such as WordPress, MovableType, Google Blogger blog.

The Chinese blog search is self-censoring, when I try to search "Tiananmen Square" in blogsearch.google.cn, I get no result. Google is not just translate BlogSearch's interface into Chinese language.

Google Answers Censorship In China

Today, Google and Tianya (a famous Chinese community website) launched a free Q&A service - "Tianya Answers". Some believe this is a strong competitors of "Baidu Zhidao" (the biggest Q&A site in China). In the bottom of "Tianya Answers" we can get "Google technology provide".

Social search has been Google's weaknesses, Google Answers is also defeat by Yahoo Answers. In China, Baidu Zhidao is the biggest Q&A service. Google launches Q&A service in China will enable Google to compete with Baidu. But in the "Tianya Answers", we found some of the very obvious Google-specific issues.

When we register a new account, we can get the following message : "Please note that according to Chinese laws, your IP information will be recorded for at least 60 days. And it will be will be provided to government agencies when we get the request."

That is mean, Google will complied with requests from the Chinese authorities to furnish information regarding an IP address of Google's users, and Google will only simply state that they just conform to the laws of the countries in which they operate.

Before in 2006, Google launches the Chinese version of its search engine to be censored (google.cn). Google use so-call SafeSearch filter used to keep people away from "bad" information, such as "subversive" material.

Google being in China helps itself more than China and simply does not fit into the "Don't Be Evil" mantra, but Google also known little about China's censorship. The "community website" is the "high-risk" project, they must face the work of looking out for and cleaning up "harmful information", if they do not get the "harmful information" out, they will be out. So they choice to collaborates with the Chinese regime.

Google "Don't Be Evil" ... Not in China.

Sources in Chinese .