China Restores Public Access To Microsoft’s Bing Search Engine

January 24, 20195:31 AM ET  MATTHEW S. SCHWARTZ VANESSA ROMO

Microsoft President and Chief Legal Counsel Brad Smith explained that it’s not the first time the search engine has been blocked. “It happens periodically,” he said in an interview with Fox Business News from Davos, Switzerland, on Thursday.

“You know, we operate in China pursuant to some global principles that’s called the Global Network Initiative in terms of how we manage censorship demands and the like,” he said.

Although Bing enjoyed only about 2 percent of China’s search engine market, its banishment was significant in a country known for controlling electronic access to information. With Bing blocked, China’s citizens had even fewer options for finding information on the Internet.