Google.com and Google.cn side-by-side image search

Google.com and Google.cn side-by-side image search

This is an interesting comparison of Google image search results using Google.cn and Google.com, posted by Schneier on Security.

As you can see, the shot on the right shows Tiananmen as a lovely happy place full of rosy memories. A far cry from the representation of the place on the left. Of course, if one mis-spells tiananmen, ie tianenmen, one arrives at more consistent representations. Language has always had the potential to be powefully subversive.