Microsoft's Search Engine Bing In China Faces Restrictions For Seven Days

JAKARTA - Microsoft Corp's Bing, the only major foreign-owned search engine available in China, said "relevant government agencies" had asked them to suspend its auto-suggestion function in China for seven days.

The suspension marks the second of its kind for Bing since December 2021. The suspension comes amid an ongoing crackdown on technology platforms and algorithms from Beijing.

Chinese internet users first saw the suspension on Saturday, March 19.

"Bing is a global search platform and remains committed to respecting the rule of law and users' rights to access information," Bing said on its Chinese search site.

Bing did not specify the reason for the suspension. While Microsoft did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Reuters.

Internet companies in China have been hit over the past year by a government regulatory crackdown that has imposed new restrictions on areas from content to customer privacy.

In August 2021, Beijing's top cyber regulator published draft rules dictating how internet platforms can and cannot use algorithms. The final version of the rules went into effect this month.

This condition certainly makes it difficult for search engines to crawl the data and content needed in the search system. Because without the use of algorithms, it is very difficult for search engines to perform searches with precision.