Sogou launches browser that beats government blocks on train ticket website

Yesterday, I wrote about how 12306, China’s government-run train ticket e-commerce platform, had just blocked all of the third-party browsers optimized by Chinese companies for buying tickets on the slow and often inconvenient-to-use site. But it seems Sogou isn’t taking that news lying down. Yesterday it launched the latest version of its ticket-buying browser, which it’s calling Zeus’s Shield; a version that circumvent’s the government blocks and allows users to buy tickets normally.

Clearly, the 12306 vs. third-party browsers battle is turning into a one-upping arms race, with each side scrambling to counter whenever the other side makes a move. As an advocate of consumers (and an advocate of well-designed, functional websites), I’m cheering for the third-party companies here, and I hope that the rest of them will follow in Sogou’s lead. As I pointed out yesterday, the ticket-buying season for China’s upcoming National Day break starts right now, so making things inconvenient for travelers right now is an especially obnoxious move on the part of the government.

(via TechWeb)