Judging Google

TCS Daily ^ | January 31, 2006 | Glenn Harlan Reynolds

[WaterDragon]

So Google is cooperating with the Chinese, and there's been a firestorm of criticism. The Times of London observes:

“Until now, Chinese net users who were blocked from accessing a site knew that the information was there and was being kept from them by their own government. From now on it is Google which will be keeping data from them, in direct contradiction of its own declared mission ‘to organise the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful’.

“The reaction to Google's move has been highly critical. The watchdog organisation Reporters Without Borders called it ‘a black day for freedom of expression in China’, adding that ‘Google's statements about respecting online privacy are the height of hypocrisy in view of its strategy in China’. It seemed that the company's real motto was something more along the lines of ‘don't be evil unless the Chinese government asks you to and there's serious money in it.’”

In taking this approach, Google doesn't distinguish itself much from other big American companies -- Microsoft, Cisco, Yahoo!, etc. -- that have cooperated with the Chinese. (Arguably, its behavior here is somewhat "less evil.") It's a big market, offering over a billion customers, and the Chinese government itself is a big purchaser. Why make them mad? How many people, besides a few human-rights types, will care that according to the Chinese Google, that Tiananmen Square never happened? And how much money do they spend on IT?

There's also a not-entirely-bogus counterargument, that Chinese citizens with access to a censored Google are still more powerful, relative to their government, than Chinese citizens with no Google at all. Though this claim seems a bit, er, convenient, it may still have a grain of truth to it.......[more]

[Combat Override Button]

Walmart does cooperate but they don't run around claiming to 'do no evil'. Google-types talk down microsoft and yahoo for bowing the the Chinese and yet they do the same thing. No when the US gov asks for names of the people posting on Youtube, Google, once again, folds like a cheap suit. Faux liberalism. I am glad they are exposed as the money souless hounds that they claim their competition is.

BTW, I don't care if they do go after the money and follow the law. It is the right thing to do. I just can't stand how preachy they are at Google.