Microsoft Claims ‘System Error’ Blocks Chinese Bing Search Results

Microsoft has moved quickly to deny allegations made by rights group Greatfire.org that the company is censoring its Bing search engine to exclude results that would be deemed politically sensitive by the Chinese government.

The organisation, whose mission is to “bring transparency to the Great Firewall of China,” made its allegations on Tuesday, when it claimed that the Bing search engine was omitting or filtering out certain search results in both the English and Chinese language. However Microsoft says the issue has been caused by a “system error”.

“Our latest research indicates that Microsoft’s search engine Bing is censoring English and Chinese language search on its home page in order to exclude certain results,” a GreatFire.org blog post states. “We have also noticed that Bing is practising subtle censorship with search results. In both instances, Bing is filtering out links and stories that the Chinese authorities would deem damaging.”

Self Censorship?

Search results on the “Dalai Lama”, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader whom Beijing brands as a terrorist, as well as “Tiananmen”, “Bo Xilai” (the former Chinese government official now serving life imprisonment for corruption) or “Falun Gong” (the banned cult) have reportedly been affected.

“A Chinese language search for the Dalai Lama (达赖喇嘛) on Bing is lead by a link to information on a documentary compiled by CCTV, China’s state-owned broadcaster. This is followed by two entries from Baidu Baike, China’s heavily censored Wikipedia rival run by the search engine Baidu,” wrote the Guardian, when it conducted its own tests on the claims. “The results are similar on Yahoo, whose search is powered by Bing.”

The newspaper said that “running the same search in English on Bing generates a list headed by the Dalai Lama’s own website then links to his Wikipedia page and news reports, including one from Phayul.com, a pro-Tibetan independence website. The English search results page also shows images of the Dalai Lama, unlike the Chinese search.”

Microsoft Denial

“Due to an error in our system, we triggered an incorrect results removal notification for some searches noted in the report but the results themselves are and were unaltered outside of China,” Stefan Weitz, senior director for Bing, said in a statement to Reuters.

However Weitz did not say if the error had been fixed, and Microsoft officials in Beijing have also reportedly declined to elaborate. Microsoft also issued a short statement to Chinese media organisations, but this omitted all reference to GreatFire.org and did not address its allegations.

Microsoft told Reuters “there were too many points in the original statement,” for it to address and sent GreatFire.org a statement, denying censorship claims, but blaming a system fault.

“We’ve conducted an investigation of the claims raised by Greatfire.org,” Microsoft reportedly said. “First, Bing does not apply China’s legal requirements to searches conducted outside of China. Due to an error in our system, we triggered an incorrect results removal notification for some searches noted in the report but the results themselves are and were unaltered outside of China.”

Online censorship in China has been an issue for some years now, and the Chinese government’s controversial “Great Firewall” is often in the headlines. China in the past has considered banning VoIP services such as Skype (now owned by Microsoft), and for its part Skype has previously had to deny claims that it has opened up user data to law enforcement officials. Meanwhile Google has also had its own well-publicised problems in China.

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