Google Inc (GOOG): This Country Doesn’t Like Political Searches

Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) is pretty much a worldwide phenomenon with its search engine, but it does take a stand when it comes to censorship.  Google has been involved in a number of conflicts with the Chinese government, for example, which has repeatedly taken shots at Google to try to restrict its influence in the Web search and overall advertising market in the country, and Google has been willing to pull all of its influence from that economy unless the government lifts its standards – just a little.

Well now, some of the same thing is happening in a neighboring Asian country, and this is potentially causing a new headache. Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) does not have a presence in Vietnam, but the country of about 90 million people is one of the fastest growing countries in terms of the Internet, and the authoritarian Vietnamese government has been imposing various levels of censorship on the Internet as it has progressed. Google searches are available, but Google seems to be the target of controversial searches.

Coc Coc, which is “Knock knock” in Vietnamese, we ‘re told, is the Google of Web search in Vietnam. And it is well aware of the censorship issues in the country, so much so that it throws Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) completely under the bus when a search query is considered politically sensitive – a.k.a. anti-government.

It turns out that when a politically sensitive search query comes up in Coc Coc search, the native search engine conveniently says the search is “not valid” and the user is immediately  jumped to a Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) search of the same topic. It wasn’t always this way, however. Coc Coc used to handle controversial searches in a similar fashion until only recently, apparently aware that the Vietnamese government is vowing a crackdown on the Internet and the types of pages to which citizens would have access.

Do you think Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) should work around regulations and have a presence in these censored countries? Let us know in the comments section below.

DISCLOSURE: None