It is true that one hosts a website in order to profit from it in whatever capacity. As such, it comes a shocking blow to know that as of 2008, officials in Thailand have blocked viewership to over 2300 websites to locals.  The major reason cited for such mass blockage is security and defamation of the government.

This becomes important keeping in mind that the political scenario in Thailand is not too stable and anything that’s cited against the king isn’t taken too well. Sites banned also include pornographic sites. The strange part of this analysis is the 90% of these sites are hosted overseas which means that international website owners stand to suffer. What may be viewed as acceptable and informational content elsewhere in the word is a taboo in Thailand?

Banned sites include those containing cartoons, articles, blogs and even YouTube videos. Thailand isn’t the first country to be practicing such large scale banning and this is popularly carried out in China too. In fact China tops the list in terms of stringency but news of banned sites elsewhere will influence website owners to review their content so as to not face the ire of threatened governments across the globe.

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Google certainly is trying to get a stronghold in the internet market. Apart from wooing regular English speaking surfers, it’s decided to introduce the perfect Chinese treat; we now have the Google China Blog Search. What seemed a potential announced is reality in less than no time. Their attempt for new clustered results which was only just the action plan posted on the Google blog search has now seen the light of day. If you go to their clustered home page, here’s what you’ll see, the Google China Blog Search.

So, you may ask what is so phenomenal about this new development. First thing first, it is first launch of the non English blogsearch interface that’s been launched. As the name suggests, it caters to only Chinese language blogs. Of course, this is just the start and soon you can expect more launches in this arena. It’s all new and very exciting. This takes us to another realm of reality. How wide is the internet spectrum and how far will things go? This certainly calls for celebration because now Chinese blogs will get a much needed platform and the world gets to hear what the once staunch communists have to say. One thing though: will the Chinese government scan everything before actual uploading like in the recent past.

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