Imitation Google, YouTube Sites Emerge In China

Imitation Web sites of both Google and YouTube have emerged in China as the country faces off against the real Google over its local operations.
YouTubecn.com offers videos from the real YouTube, which is owned by Google and blocked in China. The Google imitation is called Goojje and includes a plea for the U.S.-based company not to leave China, after it threatened this month to do so in a dispute over Web censorship and cyberattacks.
The separate projects went up within a day of each other in mid-January, just after Google's threat to leave.
"What's the reaction in these cases? In the U.S., you have a lawsuit. In China, it's just 'eh,' unless they're really doing damage to the brand," said T.R. Harrington, CEO of China-based Darwin Marketing.
Both knockoff sites were still working Thursday. It wasn't clear what Chinese authorities would do with them, if anything.
China's National Copyright Administration has been cracking down on illegally run Web sites and this month issued a code of ethics, but no statement was posted on its site Thursday about the new imitations.
Google had little comment. "The only comment I can give you right now is just to confirm that we're not affiliated," spokeswoman Jessica Powell said in an e-mail.
China is famous for its fake products, but this is the first time such prominent sites have been copied in this way, said Xiao Qiang, director of the Berkeley China Internet Project at the University of California-Berkeley.
Xiao said the sites risk bumping into problems on both sides of the Google-China standoff: It infringes on Google's intellectual property and gives access to sensitive topics in tightly controlled China. "I cannot see how these sites can survive very long without facing these two issues."
The creators of the two sites could not be reached Thursday.