Internet in China
In this post I’ll describe some experiences I had with the Internet in China, and what it means for people making websites in the west in order to reach expats, visitors, and anyone else in China. So this should be useful information even if you don’t care about China as a market at all.
This blog post may be updated, as I have more thoughts on Internet in China.
My subjective experience is that “Internet in China” is an oxymoron. How exactly is there “Internet” without Google, Facebook, and Twitter? When attaching an Android phone to a WiFi in China it even says “Wi-Fi has no Internet access”.
OK, that’s not entirely serious. Especially since I’m obviously not aware of what the Chinese language Internet looks like, not speaking or reading Chinese. Baidu looks like it largely provides the services Google does (search, maps, …), but they’re pretty much not translated. The Baidu Map app seems fine, but is almost useless if you don’t speak Chinese. The one thing it’s good for is that unlike Google Maps (if you can even get to it. see below) it actually shows you a correct location within China.
But more importantly it’s not Continue reading