China blocks sole surviving ‘Bing’ search engine
January 24, 2019 | Investopaper
The Financial Times on Wednesday reported that Microsoft’s Bing search engine has been ordered to be blocked by the Chinese government. It also said that the news was confirmed by two unnamed sources.
Microsoft later confirmed the news stating that: ” We’ve confirmed that Bing is currently inaccessible in China and are engaged to determine our next steps.”
Bing was the sole non-Chinese search engine available in the country to surf over the internet in China. The world’s leading search engine Google was blocked by China in 2010.
Chinese prefer Baidu as a search engine which is ranked 4th overall in Alexa internet rankings while it tops the ranking in China.
Likewise, social media sites like Facebook and Twitter are also unavailable in China. The Chinese government is concerned about its internet users and heavily censors the internet for its users.
The decision of the Chinese government to ban the search engine amid trade tension between the US and China has grabbed the attention of many towards the move.