Google Inc said Kazakhstan is trying to “create borders on the Web” by imposing rules on Internet search, a move that may degrade the quality of Web surfing in the Central Asian nation.
Google is redirecting users away from the customised search engine in Kazakhstan after the country’s government required that all queries go through local servers, Mountain View, California-based Google said yesterday in a blog post. Google says it routes searchers to servers around the world to answer requests the fastest way possible.
“If we were to operate Google.kz only via servers located inside Kazakhstan, we would be helping to create a fractured Internet,” Bill Coughran, senior vice president of research and systems infrastructure, wrote in the blog post.
Kazakhstan users will instead be steered towards Google.com, which will mean search results won’t be customised for the country.
Last year, Google started directing users in China to its Hong Kong service rather than subject itself to government censorship rules. “We find ourselves in a difficult situation: creating borders on the Web raises important questions for us not only about network efficiency but also about user privacy and free expression,” Coughran said in the post about Kazakhstan.