After the Hong Kong government claimed the internet giant had rejected its request to delete a well-known protest song, Google responded on Thursday, asserting that it does not influence search results.
When people looked for the city’s anthem, links to the pro-democracy song “Glory to Hong Kong” came before China’s official “March of the Volunteers,” which sparked the debate.
After the music was unintentionally played for Hong Kong athletes at two international sporting events this month, the Chinese city demanded that it be removed from search results.
Google responded to AFP’s inquiry regarding the anthem request by saying, “We design ranking methods to automatically expose relevant, high quality, and useful content since we handle billions of search queries every day.”
It issued a statement saying, “We do not manually modify organic web listings to decide the ranking of a certain page.”
Chris Tang, the head of security in Hong Kong, stated on Monday that Google had rejected the city government’s request. He called the company’s justification—that the outcomes were determined by algorithms—as “evasive” and “inconceivable.”
John Lee, the leader of Hong Kong, stated last week that Google had a “moral duty” to respect a nation’s national anthem.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry defended Lee, asserting that internet providers “have a duty to offer truthful information to the public.”
Google informed AFP that it was in touch with the Hong Kong authorities to “explain how our platforms and removal procedures function.”
“Except for the particular reasons indicated in our worldwide policy documents, we do not delete online results.”
Both Tang and Lee have suggested that Google search results can be altered, noting the addition of advertisements and the deletion of some results to adhere to European Union privacy standards.
Additionally, police have been tasked with determining if the South Korean anthem mix-up violated the city’s national security ordinance, which Beijing enacted in 2020 to quell unrest in the wake of democratic uprisings.
In Hong Kong, where Google also has a presence, the search engine is freely available while being outlawed in mainland China.
It was one of the IT firms that stopped assisting the Hong Kong police with data demands once the security law went into force.
Hong Kong leader Lee’s channel was deleted by YouTube this year, a Google subsidiary, claiming US penalties.
Lee was one of the officials the United States sanctioned in 2020 for their part in restricting civil freedoms in Hong Kong.
