In an ironic twist, a 60-year-old totalitarian government known for its virtually absolute control on its population's external communications has accused the world's most widely used free Internet search engine of curtailing freedom of information, The Associated Press reported today.

China, which tied for second to last place in Freedom House's 2009 index of Internet liberty, complained that from Wednesday through Friday attempts to link to People's Daily when listed among Google search results returned a warning that proceeding to the government-run publication could harm the user's computer because it contained corrupted software, Trading Markets reported today.

"After double checking, there is no malicious software detected on our Web site, and until now Google has not given us any explanation on this matter," Pan Jiang, the director of the books channel of People.com.cn, the official Web site of People's Daily, told the Global Times Monday.

The warning's sudden appearance - and disappearance - led Pan to speculate that it was a form of retaliation by Google, which People's Daily had disparaged in an article posted on October 20, the People's Daily reported Saturday in its own pages. The disparaging article, which was reproduced later elsewhere, contended that Google's impending launch of an online library of digitised books might violate Chinese authors' copyrights, The Inquirer reported today.

Google spokeswoman Cui Jian denied the two incidents were related, suggesting that the Chinese government "calmly and carefully examine" its source code for those three days to see if any changes to the site may have prompted the message, which is automated, The New Express reported today.

This dust up comes only four months after China disabled some of Google's search functions and barred access through it to politically-sensitive content in an alleged effort to reduce children's access to lewd material, as was reported in June by The New York Times. In July, a directive became effective requiring all new computers in China to contain censorship software, as the Wall Street Journal then reported.

Baidu, Google's chief competitor in China, has also run into trouble with the Chinese government over copyright issues, Tech Crunch reported in September. Last month Baidu received a warning from the country's Ministry of Culture that greater efforts would be employed to detect music piracy, which Street Insider reported is what now makes Baidu so popular.

Last month, China appealed a World Trade Organization ruling that states China is not allowed to force non-Chinese companies to distribute content via state-owned companies.