If you use Google to help promote your business locally or to customers in the United States, then you’re not going to have huge concerns about Google services being blocked around the world. If you make a living blogging or need to reach a global market, then you need to keep an eye on Google censorship in certain countries and learn the ways it can affect you. Sumner Lemon in PC World reports:
‘”Google products — from search and Blogger to YouTube and Google Docs — have been blocked in 25 of the 100 countries where we offer our services, wrote Rachel Whetstone, Google’s vice president of global communications and public affairs, on the company’s European public policy blog.
In addition, we regularly receive government requests to restrict or remove content from our properties, she wrote, adding that Google has argued to narrow the scope of such requests when it believes the request is overly broad.”
If you need to generate as much traffic to your blog or website as possible, you may be locked out of 25 countries. Your material doesn’t have to be objectionable to be censored. The scope of the restrictions are broad enough to keep your website out. That can have a significant negative impact on your online business.
There’s not much you can do about it other than to stay informed. Don’t ignore the issue though. Monitor Google’s response and any news about how they intend to modify their services in those countries. Perhaps you will have opportunities to capitalize on Google’s strategies for gaining access to those places.
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