In the face of ongoing pressure from different governments on Google to censor content on the many services thatthe search engine giant operates, Google is takinga middle path.
Google's popular blogging platform Blogger has started to redirect blogs to localised domains, also known as country-code top level domain (ccTLD). This means that if you are accessing a blog hosted on Google's Blogger service, it will redirect to an address with a ccTLD corresponding to the country a user is accessing the blog from, instead of the default '.com'.
For example, if you try accessing the official Google blog
http://googleblog.blogspot.com from India it will automatically redirect to
http://googleblog.blogspot.in/. Similarly, a user accessing the same blog from Australia will be taken to
http://googleblog.blogspot.com.au
Since Google is continuously flooded with removal requests from around the world, the company is attempting to comply with local laws andat the same time making the content available to users from the rest of theworld.
"Migrating to localized domains will allow us to continue promoting free expression and responsible publishing while providing greater flexibility in complying withvalid removal requests pursuant to local law. By utilizing ccTLDs, content removals can be managedon a per country basis, which will limit their impact to the smallest number of readers. Content removeddue to a specific country'slaw will only be removed from the relevant ccTLD," Google explains the reasons behind the move on a Blogger help page.
This will, however, not affect blogs that are powered by Blogger but use their own custom domains such as Postsecret.com.
This move by Google comes close on the heels of the recent announcement by Twitter that it may allow country-specific censorship of tweets that could be in contravention to local laws.
Twitter's censorship plans met with protest from users around the world. But Twitter CEO Dick Costolo sought to calm the global outrage describing the move as "athoughtful and honest approach to doing this and it's in fact being donein a way that's forward-looking."
Google says it is trying tominimise the search engine optimization impactcan the redirection of Blogspot blogs to ccTLDs may cause.
Users who want to accessthe .com version of the blog, say from India, can do so by entering a specially formatted 'NCR' URL. NCR stands for 'No Country Redirect.'
For example, if a user wishes to go to
http://googleblog.blogspot.com from India and does not want to be redirected to
http://googleblog.blogspot.in, she can enter
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/ncron her Web browser's address bar. This prevents the geo-based redirection.
Union IT Minister Kapil Sibal had recently triggered a debate by suggesting that Internet companies should pre-screen content.
Executives from Google and Facebook and 19 other companies have been ordered to appear in person in a Delhi court on March 13 for allegedly hosting obscene and objectionable content.
In June 2006 Indian Internet service providers in an effort to block a few 'erring' blogs and on orders from the government, denied access to the entire blogspot.comdomain. The Indian Internet community rose in protest and the block was later lifted.
As the spread and the influence of the Internet isincreasing in countries such as India, censorship attempts by authorities have also been rising. Therefore to mitigate unpleasant encounters with local laws Google andTwitter are attempting a workaround. Other big Internet companies may soon follow suit.
