The China Vortex

Google China announced their launch of Google China People Search in the Google China blog to help victims and their relatives get in touch with each other. I have chosen to translate the announcement in full, and have included the original hyperlinks in the story.

Aside from the human tragedy, this is an excellent study in how Chinese Internet users turn to the BBS (all of the links except for the disaster area search platform below are to BBSes) during times of emergency.

As of this morning (May 16), there are 19,579 casualties, and total fatalities are estimated to total more than 50,000. Many families are continuously looking for their loved ones, in the hope that they will be able to find them safe.

Google China’s engineers, after working more than 24 hours, have created the disaster area search platform. We have attempted to gather information from across the Internet to make it easier for users to get information. Our objective is to create a platform where bravery and hope can meet.

We hope that your loved ones are not among the long list of fatalities. Maybe they are searching for victims in ruined buildings, maybe they are caring for the injured in a hospital, maybe they are feeding a child somewhere. Maybe they will hear our call and know that they are not alone in this disaster.

If you have any information about people you know who are involved in this disaster, please post their information to Tianya Laiba, Baidu Tieba, Soso Search, Sina, and Netease. You can also send email to us. Our engineers are at work 24 hours and we will regularly update our information.

Google’s influence in China is small, so we have made this code available to everyone. Any blog and website can include this code in their website so that more people and websites can join in this search.

This is a long recovery process and there is much more work to be done. May heaven protect China, and we hope that your loved ones will be safe.

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寻找灾区的亲人

Technorati Tags: baidu, BBS, China, disaster, earthquake, google, netease, people, search, sina, sohu, soso, tianya, victims

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