Porn Search Blocked in China & Islamic Countries

Finally the Bing is here, the latest avatar for MSN. But most of the world — especially Islamic and Chinese countries — isn't getting the real Bing. As reported last week, searching for "sex" or "porn" in Microsoft's new search engine 'Bing' returned dozens of explicit images and videos, as long as the user turns "safe search" off.

Thanks to Bing's autoplay feature, dragging the mouse over a video thumbnail starts playing it immediately — meaning that you can watch hours of hardcore sex without even leaving the Bing Web site (or paying for porn). But it turns out that that only works if you say you're an English-speaking American, Canadian or Australian.

For the rest of the world, it's different. Users in most countries get raunchy images, but not videos. And a for a dozen or so countries, searching for "sex" or "porn" gets you nothing at all, not even Web links. Predictably, that list includes most of the Islamic world, including Indonesia, Malaysia, Turkey and what Microsoft calls "Arabian" countries.

It also includes India, where the "ban" is causing quite a stir on local blogs, as well as China and Chinese-predominant Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore, plus Korea and Thailand.