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Why Google in China Makes Sense
ctd writes "The BBC is carrying an interesting article about the positive outcomes from Google's censorship of its China site." From the article: "Millions of people may now be turning away from Google in disgust, but I've just reinstated them as the default search for my Firefox toolbar, because I think it should be supported for its brave decision. Even if the primary motivation for going into China is that it makes commercial sense for the company - as indeed it must do, since US law is quite harsh on boards that take actions which could damage shareholder value - it also makes political sense. "
Censorship is censorship and we're no better: http://www.google.com/search?q=xenu
Morphing Software
Even though they are blocking out a lot of porn and anti chinese govt. sites, the Chinese people will get to see all the articles on democracy and many other things that will educate the citizens. Thus the good outweighs the bad by a long shot. In time, the Chinese citizens will demand more freedoms, but this is a big step in the right direction in my opinion.
No Sigs!
In the United States shareholder value is legally paramount over any other concern. Corporate officers can be liable for monetary losses if the corporation willfully does something that does not maximize shareholder value.
This gives Google some interesting opportunities.
First, Google gets to remind the Chinese millions of times per day that their government is censoring them.
Second, Google is a symbol of Western ideas and freedoms -- again, visible millions of times per day.
Third, this allows China to eventually become addicted to Google's services. In the long term, Google could end up in the driver's seat of China's information flow.
Fourth, Google can now play the role of "secretly subversive insider". No filter can be perfect. Google will always claim they're doing "the best filtering job technically possible", but we'll always wonder if they're REALLY committed to it -- just like we always wondered about the original Napster's commitment to excellence in filtering. If 99% of the Google workforce secretly hopes that the Chinese filters will be ineffective, what do you think is going to happen?
I searched for democracy on google.cn and the first article was from wikipedia. Now I had babelfish translate the word democracy into traditional chinese and you get this interesting little tid-bit back.
According to the local law laws and regulations and the policy, the part searches the result not to demonstrate.
"If all the world's a stage, I want to operate the trap door." - Paul Beatty
To my mind, there's a significant difference between buying a pair of Chinese-made shoelaces and offering a search engine that blocks links about Tibet and Taiwan. YMMV.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
The "Business Judgment Rule" protects any decision that a corporation's board makes as long as they [1] deliberate with knowledge about the decision (i.e., they must be informed); and [2] don't have any conflicts of interest (i.e., sign a contract with the Board's president's son-in-law).
[Furthermore, the Board didn't necessary approve or disapprove of this decision. It might have just been management. They can pretty much do anything they want. When "concerned shareholders" such their own corporation, they usually sue the Board rather than only management.]
In Beijing, the capital of the People's Republic of China, between April 15 and June 4, 1989 Tiananmen Square was a site of student protests. The students were protesting communist party/government corruption and economic instability. It was violently suppressed by the government.
I think the difference between an image search google.com and google.cn speak for itself:
Placement in search results is never sold to anyone.
So how can Google explain the different ordering of results for Google China? Hasn't it "sold" the placement of results to the Chinese Government??
cool then... :-)
I was a little stunned to see them called responsible is all
I don't drink their coffee if at all possible, but there are times there is little choice. Then I request free trade coffee (try it sometime, the results range from interesting to entertaining).
-nB
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
People keep saying this, and I'd love to see an example.
Malfeasance? Yes, executives can and should be liable for that. How could a court possibly determine "maximum shareholder value"?
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
I'm definitely not a fan of the Chinese government, but I see trade deals that the U.S. gov't makes with China as far more harmful in terms social damage. Having google.cn only increases the chance that the growing number of urban Chinese will get a chance to see how crappy the web is. It also increases the chance that those inclined will explore things like tor, i2p, freenet, and more that I don't know about and implement them to circumvent the censorship.
Finally, getting back to the subject of the post, I would call it hypocritical of those of us represented by the U.S. and the DMCA to go on about how bad censorship is. Same with Germany. Google and everyone else in the search business conforms to those weird laws. Those governments don't specifically censor things that would lead to change in government, but they certainly censor things that would lead to a revolutionary change in government.
I do not want a revolution/civil war breaking out where I live (or anywhere, 'can't we all just get along'), but restricting access to information makes those who want to find such info feel persecuted and starts a cycle of self fulfillment.
Also, as an interesting side note, google.com.tw and google.com.hk are still up in classical chinese hardly a total kowtow. In fact one could just look at this as a default domain for simplified chinese, with extra censory perception.
but that's the debate isn't it? even google US is censored in some respect. The law is the proof.
Jobs and Gates are humanitarian only if they pay their workers decent wages; no amount of charity can make up for injustice
At one point, Mr Rockefeller was the most hated man in america; he hired one of hte first pr people, and for a few hundred million, became loved and admired..who says the american public is neither cheap nor easy ?
One of the popes was being shown around the vatican after his installation, and the pontiff asked a gardener how thing wer going
Not to well theman answered; my wages are so low, I can't afford to feed my family.
When the bishops protested that charity would suffer if the pope increased wages, he replied, Justice comes before charity.