Google ReBang : Chinese Language Zeitgest

By Loren Baker, Editor | February 28, 2007

Yesterday Philipp Lenssen found that Google has added “/rebang” to their robots.txt file. Usually when Google is going to launch a new service or channel, they add that site to this file.

Philipp asks “Does anyone know what Rebang is?”

Possible scenarios:

Rebang.com is a 3d design company, is Google planning on acquiring this company for its second life style 3D interface?

No, the owner of Rebang.com comments on Philipp’s blog and shot down that notion.

Instead, Rebang = è°·æŒçƒæ¦œ!

That’s right, Rebang is Chinese for ‘Hot Ranking‘ and Google Rebang will be a Chinese language Zeitgest.

But why is this not hosted on Google.cn?

Because doing so would mean that Rebang would fall under Chinese legal jurisdiction and since not all people who search for Chinese language terms on Google live in mainland China, Google Rebang should show a more transparent and honest view of what people are searching for in Chinese.