Google China Helping In Earthquake Aid

Google China has launched a multitude of help efforts for people looking for information in relation to the disastrous May 12th earthquake centered in Sichuan province. Some days ago, the Google China homepage linked to previously mentioned:

Google China also shows a Google Custom Search Engines service is part of Google’s Co-op initiative:

The link from the Google homepage has now been changed to this custom search engine:

Google partner Tianya also allows discussion of the incident at their

Accompanying this, Google launched a multitude of advertisements in Google results pointing to these services. There are ads for the maps layer, the custom search engine, and the Tianya community, when entering queries like ?? (Sichuan), China earthquake and more:

Additional to the advertisements, Google is showing a special alert onebox linking out to the custom search engine, the maps layer, Google News results, and several other search types like blog search or video search:

Google.com and Google.cn also put up a

Now, some people thought Google utilized the situation to promote their own products – the owner of a site dedicated to provide help contact information, containing support numbers and addresses of charities. The note reads “2008?5?12?14?28? - ?????????????????????”, which as far as we are able to tell translates to “May 12, 2008, 14:28 - Let us always remember this moment, may the deceased rest in peace, and the living be strong.”