14 DAY TRIAL // Yahoo.cn drastically censors Chinese users' access to information. This is shown in a recent study released by the Reporters sans Frontiers, a press freedom organization that tested the results returned by the Chinese version of Yahoo on various subjects considered subversive: 4 June (the date of the Tiananmen Square massacre), Falungong, Tibet Independence, Democracy, Human rights and Press freedom. Only the first ten results displayed were analyzed and characterized as authorized or unauthorized by the Chinese Government's standards.
The study compared the local versions of the occidental search engines: Google.com, Google.cn, the Chinese brother of MSN and Yahoo.com and their native competitor Baidu.cn. Of all these, Google.com is the search engine that censors the least amount of the results displayed, followed by Google.cn and MSN.cn, although Microsoft said it does not operate censorship. Yahoo was the greatest surprise of them all, returning more censored results than the local Baidu.com.
Taking into consideration only the ten results displayed by each search engine Google.com came in first with 7 unauthorized, 3 authorized and a number of 72 million results. Google.cn was second with 5 unauthorized, 3 authorized and 52 million results. Following is MSN.cn with just 800.000 results - 3 unauthorized and 7 authorized and Baidu.cn with the same ratio but only 450.000 result.
Last and least (!) came in Yahoo.com with a mere 240.000 results - 1 unauthorized and 9 unauthorized in the first ten.