Skip to main content

Goojje : Google Knockoff Surfaces In China


Imitation Web sites of both Google and YouTube have emerged in China as the country faces off against the real Google over its local operations.

YouTubecn.com offers videos from the real YouTube, which is blocked in China. The Google imitation is called Goojje and includes a plea for the U.S.-based Web giant not to leave China, after it threatened this month to do so in a dispute over Web censorship and cyberattacks.


The separate projects went up within a day of each other in mid-January, just after Google's threat to leave.

"This should be an issue with Google's intellectual property, also with China censorship," said Xiao Qiang, director of the Berkeley China Internet Project at the University of California-Berkeley. "I cannot see how these sites can survive very long without facing these two issues."

Both sites were still working Thursday. It wasn't clear what Chinese authorities would do with them, if anything.

China's National Copyright Administration has been cracking down on illegally run Web sites and this month issued a code of ethics, but no statement was posted on its Web site Thursday about the Google and YouTube imitations.

Google had little comment. "The only comment I can give you right now is just to confirm that we're not affiliated," spokeswoman Jessica Powell said in an e-mail.

China is famous for its fake products, but this is the first time such prominent sites have been copied in this way, Xiao said.

The creators of the two sites could not be reached Thursday.

"I did this as a public service," the founder of the YouTube knockoff, Li Senhe, told The Christian Science Monitor in an instant message conversation. Videos on social unrest in China can be found on the site, which is in English.

The real YouTube was blocked in China in 2008 after videos related to Tibetan unrest were posted there.

Some Chinese quickly welcomed the knockoff YouTube site. "I don't know if it will last long," wrote blogger Jia Zhengjing, who has written posts against censorship.

The other site, Goojje, is a working search engine that looks like a combination of Google and its top China competitor, Baidu.

"Exactly speaking, Goojje is not a search engine but a platform for finding friends," one of the founders, Xiao Xuan, told the Henan Business Daily on Wednesday.

Xiao said the site didn't have the level of sensitive material of the copycat YouTube site and that it probably was based on the Google China site instead of the version used in the United States.

"It's quite clean by Chinese censorship standards," he said.

He guessed that based on the amount of time and work needed to build such a site on top of Google's data, Goojje had already been ready before the Google-China showdown started – and that the founder or founders chose the name "Goojje" to get attention.

The names are a play on words. The second syllable of "Google" sounds like "older brother," and the second syllable of "Goojje" sounds like "older sister" in Mandarin.

Copycat companies are nothing new in China. "Baidu included," Xiao said of China's most popular search engine. "The whole idea is following Google."

Xiao said if another copycat site like these emerges, it probably would be of Facebook – which is also blocked in China.

___


http://www.goojje.com/

http://youtubecn.com/

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Email On Deck: A disposable email address that works

Today, Team Inforpioneer brings an interesting Email service for our reader which will definitely help our readers to improve their internet security and will benefit in some other ways.  Here is a short description of this service.  EmailOnDeck.com is the premier site for all things relating to temporary, disposable and throwaway email addresses. We want to help you avoid SPAM, protect your online privacy, and stop you from having to give away your personal email address to every company and person on the internet who insists on you giving it to them. We work hard and will continue to work hard to give you a disposable email address that works with any site or app. We hope to help give you back the control of deciding who you want to give your personal info to. Temporary emails are perfect for any transaction where you want to improve your online privacy. Use them when you buy or sell Bitcoins or trade cryptocurrency, at exchanges, or locally. They can be used for QA tes...

SEO Optimizing A Website For Improved Value

SEO or search engine optimization is something that every web owner and creator should be aware of. Even if a website owner hires an expert to carry out the online marketing, understanding the very basics and how it really can improve a websites performance and popularity is important. Simply put, optimizing a website is important and is built around keywords that are valuable to a website and to the products or services it is trying to provide. By focusing on main keywords or key phrases for a business, and expanding on them over time, can improve the amount of visitors a website receives, in turn increasing profits or simply improving its popularity if it is an information website. SEO is valuable, and means a way of making a site appear at a higher ranking in search engines such as Google, Yahoo, AOL etc. Using this important type of online marketing can reap great benefits. It takes time to learn and time to complete, and is a constant job to keep a website performing well above co...

Dr. Elmi Zulkarnain Osman. The Award Winning Trainer With The Right Humour.

Dr. Elmi Zulkarnain Osman – an award-winning educator, a popular corporate trainer and a highly paid Malay English Language Coach started his career as a teacher in a government school in Singapore before becoming a lecturer in a government-based institute. Throughout his career with the Singapore Public Service, Dr. Elmi has already been acknowledged as an accomplished public speaker and a motivational speaker known for his high energy delivery and humorous approach. He is also well known in the grassroots circle as an experienced Chief Facilitator and an accomplished Forum Moderator. Upon completing his PhD in Educational Leadership with Trident University International in 2018, he and a few like-minded friends decided to set up Elemantra Training Consultancy. A consultancy that has been delivering their promise to deliver an “enriching experience every time”. As the CEO and Principal Trainer at Elemantra Consultancy, Dr. Elmi is very much known for his exceptional communication ...