Google Agrees to Censor Results in China 862
neutralino writes "The Associated Press is reporting that Google has agreed to censor results in China. According to the article, 'Google officials characterized the censorship concessions in China as an excruciating decision for a company that adopted "don't be evil" as a motto. But management believes it's a worthwhile sacrifice.'"
Bold Statement (Score:3, Insightful)
And so it begins... (Score:2, Insightful)
You mean the suits decided.
I think the next year will see whether Google is true to the original DNA of the company, or whether they will become the next Microsoft, with all that implies.
Do no evil . . . (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't be evil down the gurgler (Score:5, Insightful)
an excruciating decision for a company that adopted "don't be evil" as a motto. But management believes it's a worthwhile sacrifice.
That statement is bullshit. The 'worthwhile sacrifice' mentioned is clearly meant to work against the clear contravention of the 'do no evil' motto. However what is being sacrificed? The ethics of Google. What is being gained by the sacrifice? Access to China == profit. So they're sacrificing ethics for profit - that isn't exactly original for a corporation.
More from the article: "We firmly believe, with our culture of innovation, Google can make meaningful and positive contributions to the already impressive pace of development in China," said Andrew McLaughlin, Google's senior policy counsel.
Again, bullshit. Google is an informaiton company. Their entire existence is justified by making access to and use of information easier. If they censor that information based on the petty politics of nationalists (or any other political concern) then they are not serving their purpose. They are in fact reinforcing the policies of censorship and repression in China. If everyone, every company goes along with these policies then what motivation is there to change them?
Here's a real sacrifice: lose profits from lack of presence in China and be ethical and further the cause of free speech. That's a sacrifice, something you'd like, for something better. Not the other way around. Really the way these PR droids use language makes me want to have them lobotomised... and PR school doesn't count.
Re:Bold Statement (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Bold Statement (Score:4, Insightful)
price. (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Bold Statement (Score:3, Insightful)
When a country sponsors terrorism, we boycott them. When a country massacres certain races in their country, we try to stop them. Why, when a country rules by oppression, fear, and many other completely un-Democratic ideals should we make an exception?
Money talks, my friend. Google's got dollar signs in their eyes just like MS and Yahoo, and China's gonna be a huge market in the coming years. The oppressive communist chinese government is going to get rich off its economic boom, and peasants will still have to wear adult diapers [yahoo.com] on their 24-hour cattle-packed bathroom-less train rides home for the holidays.
Re:Bold Statement (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why should Google help the CCP? (Score:3, Insightful)
For starters, China isn't a communist state. It hasn't been in over 30 years. It's a Capitalist Dictatorship (aka Facism).
And... how exactly is Google dead? I fail to see any resonable cause for such a statement.
Totalitarianism-Lite penis measuring contest (Score:4, Insightful)
I am sick and tired of the West sucking up to China. It seems China gets the best end of the bargain - they get the benefits of capitalism and trade with the west - but they get a free pass on democracy, and the West even helps them with their dictatorship and censorship needs.
So, I guess totalitarianism is bad, as long as a small, weak country is doing it. But "China very big" so, we have to do what China says.
Motherfuckers. Screw Google and all the other apologists.
To state the obvious (Score:2, Insightful)
It also calls into question their motivations for resisting the Bush administrations requests. (reminds me of the old joke: Man asks a woman to have sex with him, she says forget it. He says "how about for a hundred thousand dollars". She consents, so he says "how about for ten dollars". She says "what kind of a girl do you think I am?". He replies "We've already established that, now we're just negotiating about price".
O.
Re:Don't be evil down the gurgler (Score:5, Insightful)
- Be present in China, albeit in mutilated form. The censorship would be declared, not secret. As such, Google's chinese services would not claim to comprehensively represent Google's services. - Not operate in China at all.
China doesn't need Google very much; they already have Yahoo, MSN, et al. As such, Google declining to operate in China would do almost nothing to further the cause of free speech because it would not damage the opponents of free speech in the slightest.
Because Google lacks the potential to "further" the cause of free speech in this altercation, their failure to advance that cause in China is not sufficient to warrant the claim of evilness.
They're selling the Chinese people down the river. (Score:3, Insightful)
Not too distant future... (Score:5, Insightful)
New motto:
Do no evil unless governments compel you to if you want to stay in the market.
Re:Why should Google help the CCP? (Score:4, Insightful)
The academic community, who coined it....
Or the political leaders who use it to describe themselves on a regular basis....
The definitions are radically different. *shrug*
Re:Don't be evil down the gurgler (Score:5, Insightful)
Sacrificing the profits of China on principle has to be backed by the majority of the shareholders. Additionally, they don't want to enrich Microsoft and don't want their stock price to tank.
Of course, they have quite a few PHDs to feed.
In terms of net evil, of the options available, this is the least evil option. To remove themselves entirely from the Chinese market (the Great Firewall is effective and Google would likely not do well working around it) would be no better.
Make no mistake. Leaving the Chinese people high and dry would not be more effective or less evil. Especially when substituting a willing Microsoft or Yahoo. Ignoring a bad situation is evil. Making the best of it isn't.
Google may cooperate with the Chinese government. However, they won't be able to "purify" the search engine completely. There will be holes in the cache as well. They have so much data that there is no solution to solving this problem. Does making "imperfect" censorship available to the Chinese people sound worse than making a "perfect" set of firewall rules?
As for "reinforcing the censorship policies of petty nationalists"...how does removing yourself from the picture help? What should they do? Develop a crypto query network? Distributed it via clandestine means? Help me here.
Either using Google's "censored" content and tools will send countless Chinese to jail, or they will be able to continue to provide what they do now. In China, right now, Google is a wealth of information with everything you need nestled in the nooks and crannies. While it will be censored within the limitations of the Chinese government and technical possibility, it can still serve some purpose in spreading censored information.
Maybe all this means is that the honchos at Google have some humility. Perhaps they realize that this is the best they can do for the Chinese people. Perhaps they have coupled "Do no evil!" with "Do what you can."?
Re:In touch with the people (Score:3, Insightful)
Google did a great thing (Score:1, Insightful)
Eventually the Chinese officials will become less vigilant and information will start to flow through. This will happen sooner the more search engines there are for the authorities to keep an eye on. A search engine company that has revenue sources outside China will be in a better position to push the envelope.
People's search behavior will be very interesting to the authorities. If I were Chinese I would be a little more inclined to use a foreign search engine that would be less likely to hand over that information to the government. Google's recent action in the US along those lines sends the exactly right message.
Again, bravo to Google.
Re:Bold Statement (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd trip over myself to do business in China. Are you kidding me? Also, you lamers don't realize that Google in China would do more to erode the government's power than not? It's better for the young Chinese that Google be there, censorship or no. In fact, I'd be surprised if Google didn't code in easy hacks around the censorship criteria, and play dumb when the Chinese object. It'll take months/years for the old guard to catch on, and it'll endear Google amongst the young revolution-minded Chinese... university students, et al. Mindshare, cultural affinity, etc...
This holier than thou stance smacks of arrogance, frankly. There's something smart. A group doesn't do what you want it to, so you stop speaking to them until they do, right? lol. It's worked with Cuba, right?
I'm trying to teach myself Mandarin now. Are you kidding me? China is like the gold rush all over again. But then again, you'd know that, Wyatt.
Not as evil as the summery leads you to believe. (Score:5, Insightful)
The pro-democracy dilemma (Score:5, Insightful)
That is a question that every pro-democracy person, company, and government has to make when it comes to anti-democratic countries like China.
The answer, as with much of life, varies with the individual circumstances.
Re:Bold Statement (Score:2, Insightful)
Giggle. Right on, brother. We only approve of America's oppressive style of government!
Take the beam out of your eye. Nationalism is for chumps.
Re:Bold Statement (Score:2, Insightful)
Like Saudi Arabia?
When a country massacres certain races in their country, we try to stop them.
Like Iraq in the 80's?
Why, when a country rules by oppression, fear, and many other completely un-Democratic ideals should we make an exception?
Like Chile?
The US doesn't care about other countries, it cares about protecting its interests.
Censor for China = Bad! Censor for France = Good! (Score:4, Insightful)
Here is some more information:
http://blog.outer-court.com/archive/2005-01-15-n5
http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/050117-090
http://sethf.com/anticensorware/general/google-ce
So the question is, why are people so offended when Google censors for China, but think the same behavior is fine for Europe?
Re:Don't be evil down the gurgler (Score:3, Insightful)
Imagine if they had decided to allow the Chinese government to block their search servers. There would be big headlines tomorrow about how Google took the ethical approach while leaving MSN and Yahoo to compromise their ethics for making money. It would be great P.R. for Google and bad P.R. for MSN and Yahoo. Even if it wouldn't directly change the Chinese government's policy, it would put more pressure on MSN, Yahoo, and any other company put in a position to compromise their ethics to make money in China.
Evil or Not? (Score:1, Insightful)
Is any form of government censorship automatically "evil"? It's easy enough for us to denounce China's censorship as being "too much", but although some of us here also object to, say, Germany's anti-Nazi censorship laws, I don't think anyone would claim that was really "evil"; at least, not in the same category. Misguided, perhaps, but evil?
It's ironic that many of the posters here are of a Liberal stripe who think certain things like censorship and capital punishment are absolutely wrong. So Google shouldn't do business with China because China is "evil"? And yet it's the Liberal politicians these people support who have urged engagement with countries like China, Cub, etc., not judging the morals of other countries but rather doing business with them in any way possible, making whatever concessions necessary, to avoid confrontration and to work for change slowly from within. Meanwhile, they ridicule Conservative politicians who use such "simplistic" terms as "evil" when it comes to radical islamic terrorists.
The bottom line is, even if what China is doing is evil, it doesn't make Google's complicity evil, and you can't go to war over every dispute over morality. At this stage, slow cooperation with China seems to be the better course of action; we've been doing it for 30 years now and there has been substantial change. We revisited the debate 15 years ago and decided to continue engagement and we've gotten further results. The day may come when we draw the line and tell China it's time to shape up, but that day is not today. We don't have the resources for such a conflict.
Bruce
Re:Why should Google help the CCP? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Worthwhile?! (Score:5, Insightful)
Less hysterically (Score:5, Insightful)
Liberalisation of China is probably going to be something that happens in a creeping fashion. A position based entirely on principal (ie Google refusing outright) might actually be worse in practice because it would actually mean more isolation for the Chinese people, not less. Whatever blocks are placed it isn't going to be 100% effective.
If Google put's up a "Some results have been omited due to local legal requirements" message like they do with some other blocks all the better, at least the people will know they are being filtered and why.
Googe's a search engine, nothing more. (Score:2, Insightful)
Goodies like mail and maps aside, all they really are is a business that facilitate indexing the web. They aren't "good" and they aren't "evil", they're a corporation that performs a service for profit. They didn't turn over the search records to the DoJ because that would be suicide in the freedom (and soft-core porn) loving American market-- no one would use Google if they thought their queries were being tracked by some mysterious government agency.
On the other hand, they will not be allowed to operate in China at all unless they comply with the government... So they do.
I don't know where this comes from, the idea that Google should be making a stand for free speech in a foreign country. If such a stand doesn't come from the populace themselves, it isn't going to happen (and it just might, as even with filters in place they will have more access than ever to the rest of the world.)
Re:Bold Statement (Score:2, Insightful)
That's about the equivalent of saying that we don't need to get rid of sweatshop labour exploitation in poor countries, because the kids are used to it. Yeah, people will just use something else if Google doesn't agree to their terms, whatever. If 99% of Google's users don't give two shits about this sort of thing, then nothing is ever going to change there.
But I guess because you're happy and comfortable somewhere else with the freedom to write shit, it doesn't matter, right?
"Don't be evil." is a pretty clear message. Helping the Chinese government supress free thought and freedom sounds pretty evil to me, and given that I'm not evil, I don't think it's a great move. But hey, who cares if there's money in it, right?
Re:Not as evil as the summery leads you to believe (Score:5, Insightful)
Would you be so willing to understand?
How is this evil? (Score:5, Insightful)
Some might argue that Google could have simply held their ground and China would have eventually caved. I doubt this. There are plenty of search engines out there, and although they might not be quite as good as Google, they're not bad or anything. If popular demand for Google is big enough to make China give up their censoring, then China's censorship laws can't be that strict if something as trivial as Google versus Yahoo is willing to make them cave.
Not Just China (Score:4, Insightful)
a) any country with a useful resource and a friendly-to-us government (see: Saudi Arabia)
b) any country that would be kind of a pain to invade with no clear benefit (see: most totalitarian countries)
c) any country that would be a total bitch to invade (see: N. Korea) despite possible security benefits for us and our allies/helpers.
I am speaking of US policy hear, but generally, governments in the west follow these policies. I hate that people think that China gets a blind eye. The human rights and legal situations in China are probably the most talked about and scrutinized in the west of any non-democratic country (besides Iraq). But what the hell do you expect countries to do?
There's a goodly amount of international pressure on China as-is, and while I wouldn't be against ramping that up, I think an invasion there would be pretty much 130% Grade-A insane.
While this has been a bit off-topic, it does apply. Google has to deal with the country the way it is (as our national governments do), and the other choice is to let some other non-blocked IP become China's Google. The real test of their principles will be whether they use their market share there, once gained, to try to stand up for greater freedom of information. 'Standing up' to the government on this issue now would provide nothing besides a little bit of good PR here in the west, no substantive gain for the Chinese people.
Re:Why should Google help the CCP? (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually it's a bit more complicated than that...China (and Japan I believe) bought the US debt, at around 1 trillion dollars. So considering how now the US owes China a significant sum, it will be interestring to see how things will evolve, and if the US will stand up to them, or just bow to them and let them be.
I mean, Bush talks about getting democracy in countries like Iraq, but China, which is anything but democratic....
Its not a big deal (Score:2, Insightful)
I grew up in Hong Kong and I have been to China several times. I have relatives in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and the states. I don't claim to have a deep grasp of Chinese history or even its culture, but censorship is a touchy issue in Chinese politics. There are a lot of illiterate and uneducated people in China, especially in the country side. Censorship was first put in place as the government is worried about civilian revolutions and strikes due to misunderstanding of government policy. Not speaking the same dialect and not being able to write at all makes for some heated debates between people. This was and still is, to some extent, the reality of the situation in China. If you understand the way some terrorists misquote and misunderstand US policy and statements, its somewhat similar.
China is still very far behind the western nations in terms of education and technology. It is slowly improving its ability to educate everyone, but its no where near adequate yet. The fact that the Chinese ruling party is made up of so many politicians (1000+ from memory) means that changing long standing laws require a lot of time, as there are so many from the old guard still around. In short, just like China opening its trade borders and becoming more liberal, especially in the big cities like Shanghai, censorship will be gone in a decade or two. We just have to be patient, as the Chinese government does not like fast changes, and it has a lot of past incidents of revolutions that it does not want to repeat.
I think the main issue here is whether a US business should be allowed to operate in a way that would be illegal in the states. Personally, I don't see a problem with this. Different countries and cultures have different views on information freedom. Absolute freedom is not always a good thing, whilst government censorship is always biased and abusable. One can easily argue that leaving Neo-Nazi and bomb making information easily accessible on the web, especially to teenagers, is not the right thing to do, even in order to provide freedom of information.
In summary, good decision made by Google, over-blown censorship new stories by the media.
Re:Not too distant future... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Why should Google help the CCP? (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, they have stated that they will tell users when search results have been removed in order to comply with a chinese government request so the people searching can clearly see that its the fault of the government that their search results arent as good as they could be, not google.
My letter to Google (Score:2, Insightful)
re: "I don't believe this violates... (Score:3, Insightful)
What if the law is evil?
Re:Worthwhile?! (Score:3, Insightful)
Its a relevant analogy, but it fails to support your point since the crux of our arguments is not that Google should never compromise anything to do business, but that they should not be this evil to do business.
Re:Totalitarianism-Lite penis measuring contest (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't agree. China is getting the jobs, and growing prosperity. American jobs are declining - and Americans are sending themselves broke of the illusion of Wal-Mart dreams. not only that, but you get crappy products. of course, China can make good products, but the popular stuff in the big-box stores is pretty shit.
I don't really see the benefit from having worse jobs and more crappy products that have to be replaced every year.
Wrong, double wrong, and wrong once more (Score:4, Insightful)
If you disagree, please explain how Google refusing to participate with China would help a Chinese dissadent. Remember, China's filters have holes, and there will be even more of them if they have to watch every darned google search.
Re:Google has jumped the shark. (Score:2, Insightful)
What is interesting is, that was (metaphorically) just yesterday. Then this happens today. *Sigh*
Next question: what search engine should I switch to?
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Don't be evil down the gurgler (Score:4, Insightful)
Every little bit of effort has the potential to further free speech. The biggest name right now in the industry saying no to China might incite others to do the same and that means something. Someone has to have the balls to be the leader, and google is obviously not it. But that isn't a big deal to me. No matter how big a person(or corp) talks, not everyone is cut out to really take the sacrifices necessarry to stand by their values.
PS> I've been up for 20 hours now, spelling and grammar are no longer important matters.
Re:Worthwhile?! (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, just in case you think radioislam.net is some sort of fanatical extremist islamic sight, the first paragraph I read on the site is this:
"No hate. No violence
Races? Only one Human race
United We Stand, Divided We Fall
Freedom of Speech - Use it or lose it!"
A lot of their stuff is very anti-Bush and anti-Israel, but I see nothing that would constitute any sort of hate crime or anything like that. Certainly they are not selling Nazi memorabilia as you are suggesting.
Now, do you think censoring this site is OK? If so, why? And if it is "good" for France and German to censor sites like this, why is it bad for China to censor sites it feels are just as negative for its own society? Do you even know the sites that China bans? Maybe China is banning the exact same sites! No one has published a list yet!
There is a double standard. If you think it is OK for Google to obey censorship laws, then it should be OK. If you think it is wrong for Google to obey censorship laws, then it is wrong. But if you are asking Google to determine which is "good" censorship, and which is "bad" censorship, then isn't it reasonable that you and Google would have different opinions on what is good or bad censorship?
Re:Bold Statement (Score:2, Insightful)
Go ahead, have a laugh and be "hip" by taking a jab at the "corrupt" and "vile" American government. Just don't come complaining when you realize that you go other places in the world, even other Europeon countries, and don't enjoy the same freedoms.
Re:Bold Statement (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Not as evil as the summery leads you to believe (Score:2, Insightful)
Yeah, who cares about those pesky ideals. Keep the piles of cash coming!
Re:Not as evil as the summery leads you to believe (Score:5, Insightful)
Google has a far stronger weapon than any gun... the ability to make easy the free exchange of ideas and knowledge.
Comment removed (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Not as evil as the summery leads you to believe (Score:1, Insightful)
Chinese Google [google.cn]
US Google [google.com]
I see two very different results, and no notice of censorship.
Re:Bold Statement (Score:5, Insightful)
Yep, the whole world sucks except for America!
Or you could be moderately intelligent and undersand the point he's making. EVERY civilized country reduces freedom, rather than simply being unable to enforce granting all, for the sake of whatever the fuck you define 'civility'. If you like what civility is in your country, stay there. If you don't, vote or leave. But don't, for a moment, think that any country allows the ultimate ideal in freedoms. Millions upon millions of people on this planet prefer the style of freedoms and restrictions granted by their government over Americas, and its retarded to actually place one's personal beliefs as the measure of what the right balance is. Its reverse phychology dude
Re:Bold Statement (Score:1, Insightful)
Don't you realize how oppressive America is? You can't even show a naked ass in late-night network television or say 'fuck'! You can vote but you're not allowed to buy beer, etc, etc, etc.
Compared to many European countries, for example, the USA is pretty bad in this respect. I'm not comparing the USA to China, but it's still incredible how many Americans don't even realize the fact that their country is certainly not a model society for freedom.
Re:Not as evil as the summery leads you to believe (Score:3, Insightful)
Backwards (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Bold Statement (Score:2, Insightful)
So essentially what you're saying, is that as long as someone else in the world has it worse off, we should be grinning as our rights are stripped from us... Sounds like a good argument to me.
Re:Bold Statement (Score:1, Insightful)
How did this get modded as "insightful"? What exactly is insightful about that statement?...
Re:Not as evil as the summery leads you to believe (Score:2, Insightful)
Morality vs. legality (Score:1, Insightful)
I don't agree. Sometimes obeying a law is immoral. Sometimes breaking a law is moral.
Re:Not as evil as the summery leads you to believe (Score:3, Insightful)
Quite true, but you can buy a whole hell of alot more stuff to enrich your life with money. For example, time. Each of us has a limited amount of time on this earth, some more than others. If you dont need to trade your time for money (working) then you can spend more of your time with LIFE.
To ignore that money is really the currency of time and freedom is to shortchange yourself time.
Re:Bad comparison (Score:1, Insightful)
Actually they are a threat to Muslims as well.
The bombings in KSA and in the middle east killed as much (if not at least twice) Muslims as non-Muslims.
The "jihadis" represent the Muslim faith just as much as the KKK represented the Christian faith.
I know that this is completely OT, I just wanted to clarify that up.
Re:Don't be evil down the gurgler (Score:1, Insightful)
Does anyone really think that a company (any company, even, say, Wal-Mart) refusing to do business with China will really cause the Chinese government to change their practices?
Does anyone really think that an Internet company would cause companies like, say, Wal-Mart to also reconsider their operations in China?
Google could stand their ground and refuse to do business in China. But then MSN, Yahoo, Baidu, and whatever else will gladly swoop in and suck up the market. And nothing will have changed, except we'd get to feel good about it. Kind of like we'd feel after holding up a column of tanks for a minute before everyone is ruthlessly slaughtered anyway.
Not Google's task to oppose regime (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Evil Sellouts? (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm not the pious, high and mighty one claiming to be morally superior. I don't even claim to be not evil.
It's the corporate hypocrisy that rankles, and brings Google morally back down into the muck.
It's their right, and perhaps their duty to shareholders, to kowtow to the largest collection of eyeballs on earth. This is what happens when you become a real company in the real world.
But a private business with moral backbone would simply decline to do business in that atmosphere.
Re:Do no evil . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
Do no evil(*)
(*) Void where prohibited
Re:Bold Statement (Score:4, Insightful)
You keep telling yourself that [smh.com.au]. Here's what Reverend Desmond Tutu had to say:
The US spin machine even has a nifty term for what they're doing: Internment Without Trial. Wtf? They just slapped a happy-happy name on "guilty until proven innocent" and you guys bought it. Loyal sheep are already parroting the US government's implication that innocent until proven guilty doesn't apply to certain people.
Ok, admittedly she's British. Do you think most Americans would say any different? What worries me most is that it seems US citizens are less informed of what goes on in Guantanamo than people from the UK and Europe and Australia. Aren't you frightened by that?
As I said, remove the beam from thine own eye. You guys are acting pretty scary these days and it's even scarier when you don't realise it. The fact that I'm already receiving negative moderation for even daring to say that the US is less than perfect should be all the evidence you need that something is very wrong in the US right now.
Very, very, very wrong.
Re:Tiananmen+Square (Score:2, Insightful)
1: http://www.google.cn/search?hl=zh-CN&q=tiananmen+
2: http://www.google.com/search?hl=zh-CN&q=tiananmen
It's a start (Score:3, Insightful)
The notice might as well be "If you lived in a free country you would be seeing all sorts of neat stuff right now".
Selective Censorship and Google's Mission (Score:2, Insightful)
"Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful"
http://www.google.co.uk/intl/en/corporate/index.h
Well, I'd certainly not call this making the world's information universally accessible!
Re:Not as evil as the summery leads you to believe (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Bold Statement (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Not as evil as the summery leads you to believe (Score:3, Insightful)
And that makes it okay? "Shareholders" and society in general need to grow a conscience and learn there is more to success than money. That there's more to LIFE than money.
What if that money that they made was spent on curing Malaria in Africa, or some similar beneficial endeavour? Wouldn't that lighten this already-grey area slightly? Is openly-labelled censorship better or worse than disease? It's subjective.
My point is that it's easy to say there's more to life than money, but when money has such a significant effect on you and those around you it's rarely that simple.
Re:The Notice Is There (Score:2, Insightful)
This is very different from replacing individual search result items with "this result has been censored".
In communist Poland 60s-80s, it wasn't uncommon to see entire articles in newspapers replaced by "this article has been censored". But at least you knew what they removed. On the other hand, who reads the smallprint at the bottom of a webpage?
Google: Beware of China. (Score:1, Insightful)
There are a lot of poor people, everywhere. I don't think anyone can comprehend this nor the inability of the average Chinese person to afford anything more than day to day living expenses.
Neither is China interested in handing over its large market to western companies - vis a vis making their own DVD standard and 3G standard. They don't want to pay royalties to others - they want to keep their yuans! They know how big their market is and they know if they can come up with their own technology, even if it is a close copy of someone else's, they don't need to pay others for it.
Next, having lived in China for some period of time, I will say that during that time I often had problems accessing www.google.com. Quite often these problems seemed to appear when there was discrepency between the DNS results for looking up www.google.com in China vs the USA.
Something that's really bizarre is that not there is not universal blocking of any particular web site. Sometimes a URL won't work but the IP address will. Sometimes you cannot access a web site but someone using a different ISP can.
Lets not forget that the google cache is permanently inaccessible to anyone behind the Great Firewall of China.
Of course this google problem is easily fixed with an ssh tunnel to a proxy outside of China and a nice proxy.pac entry.
But, to round off, any company that rolls over for China will not gain any respect from the Chinese and could well be lining up to be screwed by them.
Re:Not as evil as the summery leads you to believe (Score:2, Insightful)
Or else they can simply stop cawing about "Don't be Evil". I've never felt comfortable with the their insinuation anyway-- it's fashionable to call a lot of Google competitors *cough* MS *cough* 'evil', but when you look at _true_ evil (the Holocaust, Stalin's purges, Mao's cultural revolution) you realize that Google's just cheapening the word by applying it to their competitors.
The definition of Evil. (Score:2, Insightful)
You can see this in why they haven't turned over search results to the US government. They're not being "evil" and holding to their ethics and a sense of right to privacy.
Now, why did they agree to mutilate search results by censoring them? (Which I think we can all agree is an evil thing to do, censorship and all..)
Answer : They're already doing business and making profits in the US, not helping the government won't hinder those profits. On the other hand if they want to make PROFITS in China by doing business there they have to agree to do "evil".
Profits > Ethics = Evil
They choose to pride themselves on the "Dont be evil" motto, that creates a pretty black/white line to judge on in this case. And agreeing to it gets back around to the quote already made about evil winning when good men do nothing.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Pot, kettle... (Score:3, Insightful)
Different cultures have different standards. I don't believe China's way is the best, but I'm not sure. And neither are you.
Do you really think Google has to fight against opression? Why don't you start? Go and break the DMCA ina really visible way, and face the consequences. I mean, we all know it's an unjust law, right? So why are you abiding by it?
Re:Not as evil as the summery leads you to believe (Score:3, Insightful)
Not any more, they're not. They're a hard-core capitalistic oligarchy. But they understand that by continuing to mouth Communist rhetoric, their enemies stay all outraged and irrational, attacking the rhetoric while ignoring most of what the Chinese government is actually up to.
Lots of people are falling for the ruse.
OTOH, here and there you can read dispassionate analyses of what's actually going on over there. It's hardly communism any more; it's a rather different sort of authoritarianism. It's a lot like the earlier Chinese system before Mao, but less insular. It's having some significant successes, from the ruling class's viewpoint, while the rest of the world is distracted and misdirected by the rhetoric.
Whether it's more or less evil than Communism was isn't clear yet.