Google traffic redirected to Baidu - Confirmed
Techcrunch reported yesterday that traffic was being redirected from Google to Chinese search engine Baidu.
There is speculation that the move, which also affected MSN and Yahoo, was carried out by the Chinese government in response to the United States awarding of a Congressional Medal of Honor to the Dalai Lama on Wednesday.
However, today there was some confusion over whether the redirect had actually happened - blocks and redirects are never commented on by the Chinese goverment - and several reports, notably from Infoworld suggested that the redirect story had been fabricated.
We can confirm that the redirect really did take place - at least for a while.
Although it had been removed by Friday morning (when Infoworld looked into it), our team in Nanjing tested it on Thursday and found the redirect was indeed in place.
This isn’t the first time China has redirected Internet traffic away from Google; ahead of 2002’s Communist Party Congress there were also reports of redirects, again taking traffic to Baidu (plus some rather more obscure sites).
This latest move once again highlights the control that the Chinese government exerts over the Internet in China. The message the redirect sends is clear - if you want to operate online in China, it has to be on their terms.
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