Yahoo, Google 'Irresponsible' In China

sava writes "Reporters Without Borders is reporting of 'irresponsibility' of major U.S. located Internet search engine firms Yahoo! and Google 'in bowing directly and indirectly to Chinese government demands for censorship and called for a code of conduct to be imposed.' Maybe there should be a free alternative to these search engines? Or would China ban access to it also?"

Comments

Cost!

[nuxx]

Okay, and who is going to pay for the hardware, bandwidth, and infrastructure to run a 'Free' (or 'free) search engine?

You think they'd ban it?!

[monkeyserver.com]

That's the whole point my friend, if you want your search engine to be available to the couple billion ppl in china then you are going to have to censor it. You can take the high road if you want, but china will just block your site. I doubt google liked the idea....

Remember Accounting has the final say...

It's a byproduct of capitalism

[SimianOverlord]

Capitalist companies behave as they do because their primary motivation is not ethics, but money. What is the huge surprise here? It is obvious to anyone who has given the matter any thought that search engines and their organisation and display of content are a potent tool of control. Google, despite being a notoriously private company, seems to be laisse faire about other peoples privacy, where it relates to commercial opportunity. I've never seen them as the "white knight" others have, but I use their service because it is currently the best. The interesting question is not, should they accede to censorship demands, but how would we know if they did?

What about Cisco?

[TrebleJunkie]

Hell what about Cisco? A few years back, didn't they take a large chunk of money from the Chinese to create the system by which China censors a large part of the internet from the Chinese People?

If you want to call someone "irresponsible," start there.