On Wednesday, January 23rd, the Financial Times reported that China has blocked the only foreign search engine in the country, Microsoft's Bing. Bing had only a 2% market share and was not particularly popular within China. Bing also censored and arranged content according to local government rules. Does this even matter, then?
In short, yes. We've evolved into a world where search is everything. It's in our pockets, on our desktops, and absolutely essential to completing nearly any task. Where are you going to go for dinner? Where can you get your dry cleaning done by your apartment? How do you make interesting graphics in PowerPoint?
Throughout the course of the day we use search to guide our every move. There's a lot of trust being put into search engines. China is a unique example. Already highly censored and quite cut off, I see significant value in a search engine that is not state-run. Although compliant, Bing offered an opportunity for a different perspective. As those perspectives diminish and are subsequently picked off, what do we owe the people of China to help ensure they have access to content from the world outside of their country?
Search is imperfect yet powerful. We should be doing everything we can to ensure proper controls are in place to reduce abuses of power while also bringing information to people who need it. Even with the low user rates, the loss of Bing in China is a loss for us all.
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