Youtube remains blocked but nobody seems to care

So in the meanwhile, Youtube remains blocked. Shanghai blogger John Pasden of Sinosplice informs us that Youtube wasn't the only unlucky fella. Revver.com and Dailymotion.com also appear to be hit. And of course Google Video was never accessible in China to begin with, so that's a no-count.

But the mainstream media don't seem to be bothered with the Youtube block. If you don't believe me, just compare for yourself by clicking here and here. For all you lazy bums, that's 39 pathetic results for the search term "Youtube China block" under Google News versus a whopping 3,835 for Google Blogsearch. Not a big surprise really — one would expect bloggers to be reliant on Youtube a whole lot more than the mainstream media (MSM) journalists. So you have lots of bloggers everywhere crying and screaming about the Youtube block now (like our poor frustrated friends from TheShanghaiShow for instance), while life goes on for the MSM journalists.

Some attention in the media, however, has been diverted to the question of whether (and why) for a short while that day, Google, Yahoo! and MSN searches were rerouted to Baidu. A standard report looks like this one from the AFP which cites speculation that the move was in retaliation for Washington's award to honour the Dalai Lama.

Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land has an interesting quote from a Reuters report in 2002 when traffic to Google was similarly routed to other websites at a time when China was upset with it:

Some users in Beijing and Shanghai were redirected to Peking University's no-frills search site Tianwang, the little known cj888.com and the German-invested Baidu.com, among others. Users in Guangzhou were rerouted to the local portal 21cn.com. Information Industry and Internet officials had no comment on the move. Sites gaining exposure from it denied any role in the reroutings. "It is definitely not done by us," said a Baidu official. "We have no idea where it comes from."

He then goes on to cite an NYT story in 2006 with the following juicy accusation that Baidu helped get Google into trouble:

Brin is too diplomatic to accuse anyone by name, but various American Internet executives told me they believe that Baidu has at times benefited from covert government intervention. A young Chinese-American entrepreneur in Beijing told me that she had heard that the instigator of the Google blockade was Baidu, which in 2002 had less than 3 percent of the search market compared with Google's 24 percent.

Anyhow, Shanghaiist's Youtube connections have emailed us to say the website will be back "very soon" (but don't take our word for it). In the meanwhile, do try the following VPN options: Witopia or Hotspot Shield. They've been working wonderfully for us! Why didn't anyone tell us about them sooner?!

Previously on Shanghaiist
Give us back our Youtube!
Blogger reactions to the Youtube block and other weird stuff happening

Related links
AFP: US search engines 'hijacked' in China
CNET: China accused of rerouting search traffic to Baidu
The Register: China hijacks Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo! traffic?
Information Week: Is China Messing With Google, Microsoft, And Yahoo?
AHN: China Redirects Google, Yahoo!, MSN Searches To Baidu
Search Engine Land: Did Dalai Lama Award Cause China To Redirect Google, Yahoo & Microsoft Search Traffic To Baidu?
Reuters: No Google for Chinese Surfers [2002]
NYT: Google's China Problem (and China's Google Problem) [2006]

Read the complete post at http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/shanghaiist/~3/173654733/youtube_remains_blocked_but_nobody_seems_to_care.php