While the official explanation for China’s ban on the up-and-coming DuckDuckGo search engine born in Paoli isn’t forthcoming from Beijing, the communist country’s reputation for aggressive protectionism and widely orchestrated censorship precedes it. Nevertheless, other new developments like its deal with Apple and pervasive concerns about online privacy could propel DuckDuckGo past Bing in the battle for people’s search loyalty, according to a Search Engine Journal analysis.

The speculation from Search Engine Journal is that DuckDuckGo’s anti-filtering and pro-privacy fundamentals were particularly threatening to Chinese leaders, who have since 1994 employed a so-called Great Firewall of China to shield its 618 million Internet users from select current and historical events and western ideologies. A quick search of the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre, for example, would turn up next to nothing if you were searching from behind the government firewall.

“What makes the Great Firewall of China so effective (and controversial) is not only its complex technology but also the culture that the system engenders – a culture of self-censorship,” the article quotes from a Stanford University statement. “The Chinese government mandates that companies be responsible for their public content.” Google, for example, works closely with the Chinese government to sanitize their engine’s search capabilities in China.

Read more about DuckDuckGo’s rise to prominence and China’s tradition of censorship in Search Engine Journal here, and check out previous Chesco Business Today coverage of the local search engine here.

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Top Photo Credit: Jonathan Kos-Read via photopin cc