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.
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.