WASHINGTON — Google Inc., owner of the world’s most popular Internet search engine, is urging the US government to challenge Internet censorship abroad as an unfair trade barrier.
China, Vietnam, Iran, and Turkey are among the countries that have shut off search engines, blogging platforms, or social-media websites such as Facebook, Google said yesterday. Such actions are harming the ability of US companies to profit, Google said.
“Governments around the world are restricting, censoring, and disrupting the free flow of online information in record numbers,’’ said a Google “white paper’’ posted on its blog. “These actions unnecessarily restrict trade, and left unchecked, they will almost certainly get worse.’’
In January, Google disclosed that Chinese hackers had targeted its mail servers and said it would no longer censor search results in the country. Google then redirected all searches in China to a site in Hong Kong.
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