New breakthroughs at Google and Baidu are breaking down the language barriers between countries and cultures. In fact, the new technology, called machine learning, doesn’t just make online translation services more accurate, it actually allows the computers to learn and improve. [...] improving translations is a major step forward in bringing the world closer together and helping people connect.

It has been a shock for Baidu whose fortunes up until now had been very different. Together with the likes of Alibaba, Tencent, Suning, Baidu was supposed to be a role model business in what President Xi Jinping called the Chinese dream. [...] It is private sector internet entrepreneurs who project internationally China’s soft power, which remains disproportionately small compared to the size of its economy and military might.

Google the phrase “democracy is,” and you'll get several instant search suggestions. But when you Baidu it, you only get one. Coincidence? Maybe. But China's largest search engine has a bit of a track record when it comes to politically-motivated censorship. 

So held federal District Judge Jesse Furman in Manhattan in yesterday’s Zhang v. Baidu, Inc. An excerpt (one paragraph break added): In this suit, a group of New York residents who advocate for increased democracy in China sue one of China’s largest companies, Baidu, Inc…. Plaintiffs contend that Baidu, which operates an Internet search engine akin to Google, unlawfully blocks from its search results here in the United States articles and other information concerning “the Democracy movement in China” and related topics.

Two researchers, Mark Graham and Stefano De Stabbata, at the Oxford Internet Institute have depicted the world’s “Internet empires” in a map, below. The map shows each nation’s most popular website, with the size of nations altered to reflect the number of Internet users there. The map makes for a brief, informative look at how geographic—and universal—certain web tastes and habits are.