Tuesday, June 4, 2019

A Google Search on Tiananmen Square

On this, the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protests, I was sharing a school duty with a colleague of Chinese origin and discussing the matter. I asked her if it is known how many people died there. She told me that, by the nature of the Chinese Government crackdown and censoring of information on the matter, it is not known.

So I decided to search on Google "How many people died at Tiananmen Square?"

Now, you know how Google is very helpful and doesn't make you have to type everything in a search. So, for instance, if you were interested in knowing how many people died at Pompeii, you can click for the answer as soon as you type the letter P:



If you want to know about Columbine, the letter C is sufficient:



The letter D gives you numerous options:



But look what happens when I do the same for Tiananmen Square:



So far so good, obviously the T of the word THE will bring a lot of options. So we continue with TI:




Nothing. Let's add the A:



Let's add the N:



It's as if there was no significant loss of life anywhere in human history at a place that starts with those four letters.

When you finally go to the trouble of typing all the letters of Tiananmen, the Wikipedia page gives you the answer:


Several hundreds to up to 2,600, with additional thousands of wounded.

Now, we know that any mention of Tiananmen Square on Chinese social media will be instantly deleted and one could even end up imprisoned over the effort of publicizing it. But a Google search here in the United States should autofill on the above search. And it doesn't. I'm disappointed.

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