Last week I had noticed that Google News had a few more international editions other than those existing versions. The newly added editions were in Korean and Japanese. Since both languages of the two countries are based on the encoding of UTF-8, it smelled like Google News was getting its feet on the East Asia where double-byte characters are dominant. Surprisingly, today I found three Chinese versions [ China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan ] were launched at the same time.

Let's put the one China policy issue aside for a while [ it is always the topic that touches the nerve ]. I am personally more interested in the subtle distinctions among the three version sites except for the apparent interface differences -- traditional and Simplified Chinese. These questions are, but not limited to, what news sources Google News counts on, how does Google deal with the censorship system in China, and how would Google conciliate the ideological conflicts backed the three sites.

To answer the first question, I refer to what Google states in the FAQs about Google News:

The headlines on the Google News homepage are selected entirely by a computer algorithm, based on many factors including how often and on what sites a story appears elsewhere on the web. This is very much in the tradition of Google's web search, which relies heavily on the collective judgment of web publishers to determine which sites offer the most valuable and relevant information. Google News relies in a similar fashion on the editorial judgment of online news organizations to determine which stories are most deserving of inclusion and prominence on the Google News page.

I don't know if China government will block the Chinese Google News or if there has been some agreements between China and Google to ensure the access to the site would be availalbe. According to what I have observed, all of the headlines now on the front page are from those so-called mainstream media in China, such as Xinhua, Workers' Daily, the Beijing News...etc. By means of selecting the "appropriate" sources, Google News China might have avoided the risks of annoying the China government in deliberately because they can fully count on the gatekeepers in those media and get itself free of responsibilities. I think this can also answer my second question.

I am still making some observations for the third question. Hopefully I can find the answer shortly.

While the sources of the news vary in perspective and editorial approach, their selection for inclusion is done without regard to political viewpoint or ideology. While this may lead to some occasionally unusual and contradictory groupings, it is exactly this variety that makes Google News a valuable source of information on the important issues of the day.

Updated:

My friend back in China told me that whenever he attempted to browser the Taiwan version, he would be disconnected from Google News for a little while. Seems the Great Firewall is working now.