[UPDATE, 8 p.m.: In a response to Kristof's post Friday evening, Microsoft said it's "committed to comprehensive results" and made it clear that it believes any problems are related to its search technology, not a purposeful attempt to omit controversial content. Microsoft's Adam Sohn cited "some queries that provide very balanced web results," such as a search in Simplified Chinese for "June 4th Tiananmen."

"In addition, today’s investigations uncovered the fact that our image search is not functioning properly for queries entered using Simplified Chinese characters outside of the PRC. We have identified the bug and are at work on the fix. We expect to have this done before the Thanksgiving holiday," Sohn wrote. "Bing’s intent for these types of queries is to provide relevant and comprehensive results for our customers."

He added, "We appreciate the dialog that Mr. Kristof has kicked off. Community feedback and input is incredibly important to Bing – it helps us do better and sometimes alerts us to things we can take immediate action to fix as we continue to improve."]

Original post below.

Microsoft's support for Referendum 71 won its Bing search engine a new fan in David Schmader of the Stranger, but the company's Internet search practices related to China have now lost Bing a user in Nicholas Kristof -- and the New York Times columnist is calling on his readers to follow suit with a boycott.

Kristof's objection, outlined in a blog post this afternoon, centers around his observation that searches conducted using simplified Chinese characters in Bing return "sanitized pro-Communist results" not just in China but around the world. He questions Microsoft's claim that the results are determined by search algorithms, not its corporate policy. Here's an excerpt from his post.

If you search a term on Bing that is politically sensitive in China, in English the results are legitimate. Search “Tiananmen” and you’ll find out about the army firing on pro-democracy protesters in 1989. Search Dalai Lama, Falun Gong and you also get credible results. Conduct the search in complex Chinese characters (the kind used in Taiwan and Hong Kong) and on the whole you still get authentic results.

But conduct the search with the simplified characters used in mainland China, then you get sanitized pro-Communist results. This is especially true of image searches. Magic! No Tiananmen Square massacre. The Dalai Lama becomes an oppressor. Falun Gong believers are villains, not victims. What’s most offensive is that this is true wherever in the world the search is conducted – including in my office in New York. If Microsoft felt it had to bow to Chinese censorship within China’s borders, based on the IP address, that might be defensible. But when Microsoft skews its worldwide searches to make Hu Jintao feel better, that’s a disgrace. It becomes simply a unit of the Central Committee Propaganda Department.

(This is an issue with Google as well, but to a much lesser extent. Google censors results on its search engine used within China, google.cn, but offers mostly uncensored results using simplified Chinese characters on its worldwide browser, google.com. However, some searches on google.com, such as images for Falun Gong, are also censored.)

We've contacted Microsoft for comment, and we'll update this post depending on the response. See update at top of post.