Maxthon, a browser made by a tiny Beijing company of the same name, has attracted millions of users in China for functionality that can funnel traffic through a Web proxy and circumvent government controls on information in search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN, Baidu.com and other popular sites or Internet service providers in that country.
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According to Maxthon research, about 14 percent of the Chinese Web population has used the browser and 17 percent employs it for Web search.
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Of course, Maxthon does not promote the proxy feature openly–it’s merely a shortcut that has spread virally among Chinese Web surfers. People who download the browser must be fairly technically savvy to activate it, but according to Jacobsson, various bulletin boards in Chinese instruct people how to do it.
Interesting development and great news for the people of China. But how long before Maxthon finds itself under some serious pressure from the CCP?