Posted on 02/02/2006 5:41:26 PM PST by WaterDragon
ast week America's second largest technology company, Google, announced a program that would assist communist China’s ongoing attempt to control the minds of its over 1.3 billion people. Simply put, Google will help make sure that when anyone in China looks up Tiananmen Square on the Chinese version Google is creating of its top rated search engine, that person will never see the famous picture of a student facing a Chinese Army tank.
Google is perverting its own wonderful market leading search technology, that opens up the resources of the entire internet to everyone, into becoming the world’s most efficient censorship machine. And it is doing this so it can get even richer by gaining access to the fastest growing internet marketplace in the world. China is now second with over 100 million users and will soon to surpass the United States and become the largest internet market in the world.
In spite of Google's aging hippie rhetoric on its website about "Do No Evil," there can’t be anything much more evil than helping a totalitarian regime, that once brainwashed captured United States POW’s during the Korean War, brainwash its own citizens more efficiently.....[more]
How about because the way China treats its people, our copyright laws, religion, political prisoners, fetal abortion...just to name a few.
Hell, put trade laws on them because of the way they treat their dogs...But dam..only NOW because of Google..jeez
So, they must have their own Google. How does China control what another country posts? Someone must read everything on the internet for special words, and photos and delete them, like US does to catch child molsters,
criminals, and other propaganda. It would be interesting
to see the "don't" publish list(s) for each country.
Furthermore, as the article points out, it is quite clear how corrupting the influence of the PRC is over our corporations that deal with it.
I married my wife in China. Impressive people and impressive country. Won't be fun to one day have to fight them....particularly the way we and other developed countries have been building them up into a world power.
Quality of Chinese manufactured products is getting ever better, thanks in large part to new and more modern factories being built over there, as the West shuts down it's own factories (older and less modern).
btw, typical of liberals....unendingly supportive of repressive regimes....as long as they are leftist tyrannies.
All of the reasons you cite are precisely why Google should not be supported in its kowtowing to the Chinese govt.
I can't agree with you about Google. By providing Google.cn they are enhancing the freedom of the Chinese people who do not have access to Google.com about 10% of the time. When they are required to censor search results they put a notice at the bottom of the page saying so. Those in China who do not want their search results censored can then try Google.com to see what it is they are missing.
Damn straight Skippy BUMP!
Have you used Google overseas? In some places, you cannot get to google.com and are forced to use the google.co.(fillinthecountryhere) site.
Which is kind of my point. Google claims that Google.com is unavailable in China about 10% of the time. During those times, having Google.cn will give the Chinese people an option. It enhances their freedom.
What the anti-Google side seems to overlook is that the alternative is no Google at all. How this helps the Chinese people escapes me. They're only looking at it as a cooperative project between Google and the Chinese government, and leaving the Chinese people out of their calculations.
The element in this is: China does not have to change.
Instead of the usual way of first changing your ways and then we reward you, the Chinese get the pass of we change to adopt to them.
So for the Chinese gov't they win again. They know once again we will lower our standards to comply.
What is the incentive for the Chinese to change? None.
And what is the incentive for the Chinese government to change if Google does not agree to their terms? My hunch is that under those circumstances the Chinese government would just as soon do without Google.
“It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God”
Punishing Google for not being allowed to provide all content to the Chinese people is like punishing gun companies because they can't sellcertain gun in certain countries, including our own.
Google is providing valuable services to the Chinese people. Theya re giving them easier access to a wide variety of information, and the Chinese people are better off for having access to it.
Google cannot give those people access to information the Chinese government bans them from providing. They have no effective means of fighting the Chinese government on this. They can only withdraw from the market, and that harms the Chinese people and helps no one.
Google isn't helping oppress the Chinese pople any more than a firearms dealer in the US is helping our government oppress me by refusing to sell me a fully automatic weapon because the law prohibits it.
I'm also kind of baffled about how this author thinks "trade sanctions" are applicable? What's being traded? Google is providing services in China from Chinese based servers.
There's plenty of reasons for our government to be upset with the Chinese government including thier laws that prohibit the free flow of information to their people.
However, punishing Google for those laws is moronic.
It's not a matter of deciding to kowtow. It is a matter of the decision to do business in China, period. When that decision is made, there is no option but to comply with Chinese law, which means censorship.
At least Google declined to offer blog or email services, where they may be forced to hand over dissident information like Yahoo did.
I rarely directly insult anyone on this forum because it is not a persuasive argument. But I think you've opened the door by categorizing the outrage against this perversion as "moronic", so I respond in kind: you are, IMHO, a spineless moron of the first order.
It goes without saying that your analogy doesn't hold water. Google's product WAS a neutral compilation of where to get information available on the internet.
The only analogy that would hold with guns is if a foreign country demanded a gun manufacturer cheapen their product in such a way that using the product might kill or harm the user. The gun manufacturer would, of course, have an obligation not to cheapen their product to the point it might kill someone.
This deadly danger has apparently already occurred with Yahoo turning over records on one Chinese dissident and then that dissident was arrested and....oh, sorry, no information available on what happened to him.
I both apologize and am ashamed of the fact that fellow americans dash the hopes of freedom-yearning people in Red China that log on to the new google, that they have been clamoring for, only to find they have sold out. What harm to their collective psyches that must entail. It would be like having listened to radio free europe as your beacon of hope for years, and tuning in one day to find that your own government now controls the flow of information on that station.
Tell you what, Mr. idiot-electrical engineer savant, stick to your circuit boards and let the rest of us on freerepub defend your freedoms for you.
Fair enough. I opend myself up to that comment with what I said. However, I'm more than happy to defend my reasoning.
It goes without saying that your analogy doesn't hold water. Google's product WAS a neutral compilation of where to get information available on the internet.
Google's product is a search engine that allows you to search a vast amount of freely available content. They provide a service that allows you to seek out content based on keywords you enter.
In China they have limited the functionality of that in accordance with the laws there.
In the US I can buy a semiautomatic version of a fully automatic rifle. The laws in the US require the manufacture to limit the capabilities of the rifle in order to sell it to me. I don't blame Rock River Arms because I can't buy a full auto AR15 from them. I blame the US government.
I would be much less happy if I could not buy such a rifle because the gun manufactures decided that it was in my best interest to not be bale to buy the rifle unless I could get the full auto version.
The only analogy that would hold with guns is if a foreign country demanded a gun manufacturer cheapen their product in such a way that using the product might kill or harm the user.
Bull crap.
For your analogy to hold true you Google's actions would have cause direct harm.
Google isn't taking anything away from these people. The laws in China prohibited they from having access to that information before Google entered the picture. Google is giving them better access to information than they have had in the past, not taking information away from them.
Google is however, limited in the services they can legally provide by the laws of the nations in which they operate.
I don't agree with those laws. However, I recognize that Google has no way of changing those laws, and the Chinese people are better off with Google providing the services they can legally provide than if Google provides nothing.
This deadly danger has apparently already occurred with Yahoo turning over records on one Chinese dissident and then that dissident was arrested and....oh, sorry, no information available on what happened to him.
I disagree with some firearms laws in this country. However, if someone breaks those laws and talks about it on the telephone, I don't blame the telephone company for following the law and allowing their conversation to be tapped. I blame those making the laws.
Yahoo, MSN, and Google could withdrawal from the Chinese market. How will that help the Chinese people? Answer that question for me.
Tell you what, Mr. idiot-electrical engineer savant, stick to your circuit boards and let the rest of us on freerepub defend your freedoms for you.
I have no problem with people defending their freedoms. However, unless you can tell me tell me how Google leaving that market will help the Chinese people, or what power Google realistically has to change things, I will remain convinced that you are simply attacking the wrong target.
If you are worried about the Chinese people, shouldn't you be able to show how your desired results could make their lives better? So how will Google, MSN, and Yahoo not providing their limited search services help those people? Those companies simply don't have the ability to provide unfiltered search services. The Chinese government with shut them down quickly if they tried.
Our government forces companies to do what they don't want all day long - why is everyone upset that China does the same think.
Our government says:
You want to do business here you have to do this.
China's government says:
You want to do business here you have to do this.
I just don't see the difference.
Unlike your gun manufacturer that has several models, Google's product is accepting keywords and returning the results of information available on the internet. There was no "less deluxe model", nor can there be. There can only be a corrupted, cheapened Red Chinese propoganda tool, portraying itself as Google when it is fact a fraud, not the genuine product. What Google holds out to be their product is simply a neutral tool to search for information. When a Chinese Christian searches the word "Christianity" on the fraudulent ChiGoogle and is redirected to a Red Chinese site deploring Christianity as a cult, Google has actively collaborated with Red Chinese thought police to subvert the flow of freely exchanged information, an evil.
As an example, one western magazine published an article that Beijing took offense to this month (and whatever they take offense to is what is banned: there are no standards, of course, just whatever they don't like). They may have asked the publisher to omit the article, I don't know. But the article was HAND TORN out of each magazine that appeared for sale in Beijing. The publisher did not print a special "Chinese deluxe" version of the magazine with the article deleted, they made no compromises, nor can they without being a wholly different product. The censorship via destruction was done by the commies themselves.
In oppressed nations there all laws against listening to radio free europe, or Radio Free Cuba or China or whatever. The citizens know the risks to their limited freedom if they choose to listen.
Good thing you weren't making the decision to broadcast the radio free network, 'cause I can just hear you saying "Why broadcast when there are laws against the people listening?"
Most of us here at freerepub believe people everywhere have certain inailenable rights like free speech. We support our country's effort to export freedom, as our brave soldiers are doing in Iraq as we speak.
Google could band together with other internet providers so as not to lose a competitive edge, (or perhaps we will have to demand it be done) and stand on principal which will serve them better in the long run. They could setup wireless Broadband like the Verizon system near the borders of China, maybe even from the Hong Kong region, and pump their product into China and to hell with the thought police and their apologists like you.
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