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Google Agrees to Censor Results in China
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.'"
be evil.
sulli
RTFJ.
I clicked on "Read More" as soon as the article came up and I got the message
"Nothing for you to see here, please move along"
Chinese censorship on slashdot too? 8@
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
I have no problem with selling China cars or airplanes or other stuff like that. But to actively collaborate with the regime in stifling dissent is just too much. After this, I don't think anyone should have any faith at all in their claim that they will stick up to the US Government's fishing expedition.
Google is dead. Someone new will take their place. Someone who doesn't kowtow to dictators.
sulli
RTFJ.
Google had the decision to either:
- 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.
Same _exact_ reasoning will apply to handing over search queries and associated user data to the US government.
New motto:
Do no evil unless governments compel you to if you want to stay in the market.
That's the problem with being publicly traded...
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."?
I think Mauve has the most RAM. --PHB (Dilbert Comic)
As the article goes on to state, when an item is censored Google will tell you it has censored the searched item to comply with local laws. This sort of censorship where you know something is being kept from you is much less scary than the type where you simply don't know what is being kept from you. Simply providing their search engine to China in censored form, and admitting to users they are being censored isn't evil. What is evil is the Chinese governments restrictions on free speech, but Google can only choose to provide a censored search engine or not provide one at all.
Big apple, new Yorik, undig it, something's unrotting in Edenmark.
Google has been censoring it's results in France and Germany for some time now, in order to comply with French and German laws. Do you think that Google should also choose to stop doing buisness with France and Germany too? Is google being evil by complying with France and Germany's censorship laws?
I think the moral high ground isn't to get into bed with a facist country for the sake of money. But I can see why Google fans would want to spin that in a positive way. Yes, Google could have done worse. But they're still aiding and abetting the Chinese government.
I fail to see how this is evil. Google had two options. They could either censor some of their results, or China would censor all of their results. If censoring is bad, logically more censoring is worse than less censoring. Google thus is not doing evil, they are making the best of an inherently evil situation. If this is evil, then "doing no evil" is impossible, because no matter what they did, evil would have been done.
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.
"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity." -- Hanlon's Razor
For those who can't read Chinese, there is a line of text at the bottom of the screen saying "In compliance with local laws and policies, some search results are not being shown."
You don't tell you how many results have been removed or where those results would fit in the "normal" search results. Personally I think some message that appears for every deleted search result would be less evil than the very subtle, almost un-noticable, message that they have now.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Tiananmen+Squ are+&btnG=Google+Search
S quare++&btnG=%E6%90%9C%E7%B4%A2&meta=
http://www.google.cn/search?hl=zh-CN&q=tiananmen+
The bulk of the English results refer to the massacre. Not oe of google.cn's hits refers to this. Nor is there a reference to the vast omission.
And they say this is not censorship.
Rather:
Do no evil(*)
(*) Void where prohibited