Silicon Gulf

Just now I got a text message from Bob Martin, who’s wondering why he can’t access Google’s search pages. Then, he said he can’t access his Google AdSense account pages as well. What happens, according to Bob, is he gets redirected to a landing page whenever he tries to access www.google.com. Take a look at this screen capture of Bob’s browser.

He’s connected to the Internet via PLDT myDSL. Why is PLDT seemingly blocking Google? In fact, it’s not just Google but AltaVista, Yahoo! and MSN as well. And on that landing page is PLDT’s own search engine, with advertisements.

If you notice, Bob’s using OpenDNS, but when he turns it off, he says the resulting page comes out the same. I use OpenDNS too, but I’m not having this problem.

To verify this, my other friends who are on PLDT myDSL confirm this strange development. A backward development, if you ask me.

Is PLDT blocking search engines and portals so that they can offer their own online services? If that’s the case, that is very much akin to the Gestapo tactics of World War II Nazis.

But there’s more. Check out this next screenshot.

This is a journalist’s blog, Istambay sa Mindanao, which is being blocked by PLDT, because it’s categorized as a blog. Other Davao blogs being blocked so far are Councilor Pete Laviña’s, Taga-Davao, Village Idiot Savant… My friend Bob thinks his blogs will fall into this black hole as well.

Are we in China here? Or Saudi Arabia? If this is indeed the doing of PLDT, do they think such deceitful devices will stand for long in a free and democratic country? (Where there are a lot of bloggers, I might add!)

I’m on SmartBro DSL, which is also part of the PLDT ilk. Are they going to follow suit as well?

This just in: Gmail is also being blocked by PLDT. In my estimate, tens of thousands of Filipinos use Gmail. What’s next?

For this survey, I asked:

What is the search engine you use the most?

More than a thousand responded. The poll is purely about searching the Internet and discounts other services such as free email, news, social networking, blogging, etc. There is a high chance of an “overlap” occurring between search engines. That means a respondent may search on his/her search engine of choice and use a different one right after. The more popular a search engine is though, the less overlap there is. Google topped the poll with 84.55%, trailed by Yahoo! with 11.07% and MSN/Live with only 2.14%. Ask and AOL each took in less than 1%. Ethnicity of the sample group is predominantly Southeast Asian, accounting for about 30% of the pie. That means Google has become popular in countries such as Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, Singapore and Vietnam. The USA made up 19% of the demographic, more than any single territory in the group. The most current Nielsen ratings places Google’s share of the US search market at 54%.